I Feel Brave Today

When "I didn't sign up for this sh*t" turns to "How can I help?"

Courage feels like a big word. When a character in a story is described as “courageous,” one generally thinks of action – vanquishing enemies or facing impossible odds like dragonriders who hope to impress dragons. In real life we might think courage belongs exclusively in the domain of explorers and adventurers, soldiers, astronauts, firefighters, and other people who do things. Even the definition of courage includes action: “the ability to do something that frightens one.” It also, however, includes the verb “to be” – as in “to be strong in the face of pain or grief.”

To be brave feels much more personal and manageable than to do courageous things. It’s something we do every day, often without even realizing it. Striking up a conversation can be brave, facing a problem, writing a text or a post or sharing a photo – brave. Becoming a parent involves a climbing-Mt.-Everest-amount of courage on a daily basis, and sometimes getting out of bed in the morning can too. Recognizing it and celebrating courage, however it shows up, is one of the keys to fostering confidence in all people, and especially in children as they begin to put themselves together as human beings.

There are days when my own courage flags, and I’ve come to recognize them as times when I don’t roll with the punches quite as easily. Whether it’s that my confidence is shaky, or that I’m operating on “too little” or “too much” of anything, it’s often hard to step outside the feelings of frustration and anger and break them down to their sources like we so often do with babies (if they cry, are they hurt, hungry, tired, or in need of a diaper change?), because the byproducts of overwhelm are just so … overwhelming.  Then, on “overwhelm” days, when our children are in that mix, it’s inevitable that they show up wrapped in cloaks of the unexpected like tiny chaos agents, and suddenly voices raise, tempers flare, doors slam, and tears flow.

And yeah, sometimes a good rage-quit is exactly what we need to let off the steam of frustration, but modeling that for our kids is problematic at best and certainly doesn’t show off ideal behavior.

When my kids were young, my husband worked in the Yukon Territory for six months a year, so I spent a lot of time solo parenting. I was writing books and raising kids, and too often felt like a failure at both which led to a lot of overwhelm. Pretty much nothing good ever came from venting my overwhelm on my kids, so I started breathing to five whenever an automatic reaction threatened. Breaths one and two were just the breaths my lungs would need to cry or yell or whatever else I wanted to do but shouldn’t, three and four were usually spent trying and discarding all the words in my head that I wouldn’t say out loud, and by breath five I was usually able to ask a question instead. And when that question was “how can I help?” or “can you show me what you mean?” we were all usually able to calm down enough to actually listen. Those five breaths gave me enough perspective to hear the things they weren’t saying, whatever they hadn’t found words for. And sometimes, just taking a minute to throw together a frozen fruit smoothie for everyone was enough to diffuse a situation entirely.

I remember one September morning at 8am, the small boy was still in pajamas, not even close to being ready to leave for school. By September of any given year of my kids’ young lives I’d been solo parenting for five months and “I didn’t sign up for this sh*t” had become a constant refrain in my head. Overwhelm had moved in and frustration was next when a random comment about a Christmas toy that had been laughed at by a friend brought sudden, unaccountable tears.

I took five breaths, and when the voices in my head had quieted, I pulled him into my lap and asked him questions. How had he felt when his friend made fun of him for loving Sophie the Giraffe, and what had he made it mean about himself and about the favorite toy? We talked about kids who laugh, and getting "hooked" into anger or frustration, and what it might feel like to shake off the hook, shrug your shoulders, and decide the laughter doesn't change anything about who you are and what you love. The tears dried, a smoothie was consumed, and we raced around like dogs with the zoomies doing all the getting-ready things that sometimes made me raise my voice but didn't that day. And then, despite being very late, we walked to school.

Small boy held my hand as we walked. “I feel brave today, Mom.”

Let me just say, a five-year-old's bravery isn't just a dose of perspective on the solo mom overwhelm, it's a freaking superhero cape. To be brave in the face of judgement, in the face of laughter, in the face of insecurity and fear was a lesson I learned from my son that day. And for him to feel brave was to have been listened to, to have been asked questions, and to feel connected to someone who cared about what he’d experienced. It wasn’t as if he was marching off to face the friend who had laughed at him, doing something brave; instead he was feeling strong and in control of his emotions. He was being brave.

I still get days that overwhelm me, and I still sometimes have to take five breaths before I answer an email or write a letter to the school board, and a walk around the block, past the elementary school where my kids grew into such brave and interesting people is necessary to calm the zoomies that threaten my patience. And even now, on those days when my own confidence flags, I find myself reaching for that small hand in my memory, and I listen until I find the bravery.