Soliloquy on Courage:

Courage is so often painted in neon—as if it’s the roar of a stadium, the flourish of a triumphant finale. But most days, courage arrives in flannel pajamas, handing us a toothbrush and car keys and saying, “Honey, let’s try again.” It is the quiet pulse of willingness that steadies us when the very idea of being visible feels like sandpaper on tender skin.

Be Patient Toward All

I think about the mornings when simply sliding into the driver’s seat feels like scaling Everest. Depression drapes itself across my shoulders, whispering that grocery runs can wait, that the dog won’t mind kibble crumbs. Yet I turn the ignition anyway, because showing up for a four‑legged friend is sometimes the closest I can get to showing up for myself. That choice—small, mundane, almost invisible—is courage in its purest attire.

Courage is the hesitant knock on a neighbor’s door, two daisies from the garden trembling between my fingertips because it hurts to witness her grief and I have no eloquent words. It is the ache in my chest as I sort a battered box of childhood letters, letting memory sting my eyes while promising the younger self inside each envelope: I see you now. I won’t look away again.

There are days when courage tastes like antiseptic mouthwash at the dentist’s office, proof that my body warrants upkeep even when no one claps for clean teeth. Some evenings it smells like dust and tax forms, the crisp honesty of accepting what the numbers reveal about my life. And sometimes—most painfully—it sounds like my own footsteps echoing down an empty hallway as I leave a marriage that looks picture‑perfect from the street but starves my spirit behind closed doors. I walk out not because I’m sure of the future but because integrity refuses to live in pretense.

Courage, then, is not a performance for the world’s verdict; it is an intimate covenant with ourselves. It is the willingness to face our stories—especially the pages smudged with secrecy—and keep breathing until shame loosens its grip. It is the resilience that whispers, “Even here, even now, we can choose.” Choose to admit we don’t know how tomorrow’s bills will be paid, choose to ask for help, choose to risk being misunderstood rather than betray our own knowing.

Brené Brown tells us that courage is showing up and being seen, but I’ve learned that the first witness we must invite is the one in the mirror. Every time we refuse to abdicate integrity—whether by buying dog food, cutting flowers, calling the dentist, or standing in the rubble of childhood confusion—we stitch another thread into the fabric of self‑trust. And that fabric, woven day by trembling day, becomes the cloak that lets us walk into the world unarmored yet unafraid, hearts beating out the simplest, boldest rhythm: I am here. I am still choosing.