What is courage, exactly? Is it a feeling? A superpower? A myth? Courage is not something that you’re born with or a genetic quality that you can inherit. Courage can’t be bought and it’s not something that your parents can gift you for your birthday or graduation. Courage is something that you find. Just listen to our culture’s vernacular… Where did she find the courage to (fill in the blank).
So where the hell do you find courage? I don’t have any magic tricks or definitive answers. I can only tell you where and how I found some much needed courage the morning of my third and most fierce chemotherapy treatment. The first two chemo treatments were really challenging and cumulative. By the third treatment, I was completely bald, weak, and perpetually freaked out. To make matters worse, I had just heard about a woman from my hometown who was also battling breast cancer and died suddenly of a heart attack post-chemo, possibly from the fierce, potential side-effects. I was so consumed with the fear that I was going to die and thought I could prevent my imminent death by staying under the covers. My husband at the time was a physician and insisted that if I didn’t go to chemotherapy, that I would (eventually) die from the breast cancer, which had already spread to a lymph node and possibly beyond. This was truly a dilemma, and I wasn’t up for the task.
I took some time alone and sat quietly, eyes closed, and convinced myself that I had the courage somewhere inside of me, but just needed to find it. Maybe courage is a place, like a room you enter that can fill you up with a sense of your own power, I mused and imagined a series of doors in my psyches, all closed, some locked. I didn’t need to be fearless, just strong enough to face my fears. I approached each door with curiosity and acceptance. One of the doors opened, but instead of a plush library, which I had initially envisioned, I found myself outside in a field at my grandfather’s farm, riding a horse named, Big Dan. I was ten years old and terrified of horseback riding because I had fallen off the previous time we went riding. My grandfather encouraged me to take it slowly, to ‘warm up’ the horse so his muscles would be ready for a longer ride, but knew that he was really telling me to take it slowly as I warmed up to the idea of riding atop this enormous animal.
The older version of me who opened the door sort of merged with the memory of my ten-year-old self. After a while, I let up on the reins and had the confidence to trot and then eventually canter across the field. I took that feeling of that powerful horse underneath me and let it wash over my psyche. I didn’t conquer my fear completely, I just faced it enough to catapult me through all of my remaining chemo treatments. That was more than a decade ago. Sometimes, I still sometimes conjure my ten-year-old, horseback riding self and feel that spark of courage.
I honestly don’t know where courage lives in you, but I believe you can find it somewhere in your psyche. Maybe it’s a memory, or an idea, or a piece of music, or a poem, or just a vision of yourself being braver than you actually feel. Just get quiet with yourself and start opening those doors.
