Inspirational Blog Post - Courage is the Key

 

    When my daughter was about two and a half, as she sat in the seat of the grocery cart while we navigated the aisles of Vons one evening, she suddenly threw back her head, flung her arms wide, and shouted at the top of her voice, "I LOVE EVERYONE!!!"  It was a sweet moment that elicited some smiles and chuckles from both myself and my fellow shoppers.  But as I have watched her navigate life, I've looked back at that moment as almost a precursor to a deliberate and courageous manifesto — a line in the sand that said to society and to the world and to herself, "I choose love, no matter what."  That love has come at a cost, and has required immense amounts of humility, patience, compassion, curiosity, and generosity.  But in order to exercise any of those virtues, I have seen above all else that it has required courage.

    I remember one day when my daughter was 6 and she came to me after being at a class day and asked, "Mommy, is it OK that I'm different?"  She's been a child who has somehow always found herself out of step with those around her.  I can relate to a lot of what she's gone through, but I responded by developing a shell at a pretty young age and shutting myself off from anyone who I thought might reject or disappoint me.  Throughout the years I observed her, however, live her life wide open with no defenses, approaching every person and every situation with receptiveness and sincerity, and then feeling puzzled and crushed when her unprotected heart was hurt or rebuffed.  I valued her purity and generosity of spirit so much, and didn't want her to lose such a precious attribute, but it was so excruciating to watch her pain that I almost hoped that she'd build up some defenses or develop some hardness.  Yet instead of putting on armor, she developed resilience.  

    For her to continue to put herself out there and treat people with curiosity and kindness, knowing that more often than not they would hurt her, took an incredible amount of courage.  When I'd get angry as I saw how others treated her, and she could see how I felt, she expressed compassion and a generosity of spirit as she said, "Mom, it's not their fault that they feel uncomfortable around me."  While she was amazingly secure in who she was and didn't feel that she needed to pretend to be someone she wasn't, she also gave others the space to feel as they did without her seeing it as a character flaw in them.  I saw that humility and graciousness as another form of courage — the courage to not blunt her pain by seeing others as being wrong . . . the courage not to build herself up by tearing others down.  There was a brief period as a young teen where I saw her begin to become somewhat cynical about people, which almost came as a relief to me, but then I quickly watched her deliberately dismantle that cynicism and rebuild her grace-filled posture toward others, albeit with a little less naivete.

    At age 17 she was finally diagnosed as Autistic.  It comes as a surprise to many who know her, but to those who are familiar with how low support needs autism presents in girls it was expected.  She felt some relief that her experiences with others throughout her life finally began to make sense.  She continues to embrace and accept both who she is and those she comes into contact with.  She is studying to become a play therapist who specializes in working with kids with ADHD and autism, so they can learn to understand and value themselves.  She's also finding, as she begins to navigate a more adult world, that there are more and more people who meet her openness with acceptance and a mutual friendliness, and that outside of the context of an age group filled with comparison and peer pressure many people really do think she's as amazing as I've always told her she is.  She has inspired me, when I've wanted to respond to fear by self-protecting and shutting myself off, to instead choose courage, to tear off my armor and approach relationships with love and abandon, living all the virtues I long to embody.