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Hello friend,
Last week I asked you a question, and quite a few of you wrote back. I have been reading your messages all week, and there is something running underneath nearly every one of them.
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WHERE WE LEFT OFF
The question was this. What have you done in your life that you have always dismissed as no big deal, but that another woman might look at and call brave?
Your answers told me we have a hierarchy of bravery.
One woman wrote about taking on a bullying principal at her son's school. She kept pushing, kept speaking up, kept going through the proper channels, and by the time she was finished, that principal was fired.
That takes some serious gumption.
Then I heard from two women who had done something alone that they had never done before. One went out to eat in a restaurant by herself. The other took a train trip. Both of them said the Leading Lady Challenge is what pushed them toward it.
The woman who went to the restaurant told me she had not realised until that moment that she had never eaten alone in public. And when she walked in and said table for one, she was scared.
I loved that.
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THIS WEEK
Because this is exactly where we get ourselves into trouble.
If those three women were standing in a circle telling their stories, it would be so easy for one of them to hear about the school board and think, well, what I did wasn't brave, I just ate lunch by myself.
That is not how bravery works.
I remember the first time I ate alone. I was 18, living in a new city, and back then you could still smoke in restaurants, so I suppose I had a little companion sitting at the table with me. 😂
I did a lot of things alone that year. Looking back, it prepared me for most of the life I have lived since.
I have travelled alone many times. I walked the Camino. I have gone places and done things on my own that other women have looked at and said, you are so brave, I could never do that.
And do you know what I have always done? Poo-pooed it.
Because somewhere along the way I decided that something only counts as brave if you are afraid to do it. And I have never been afraid to travel alone. So I did not call it bravery.
What I never honoured was what she was seeing when she said it. She was not describing my fear. She was describing her own edge.
Sometimes we are so close to our own lives that we cannot see what another woman sees when she looks at us. And sometimes we do the opposite. We look at her act of courage and decide it does not really count, because we would not have found it difficult.
Courage does not run on a points system.
One woman's comfort zone is enormous in the exact place another woman's is tiny. What matters is not how it looks from the outside. What matters is that she stepped out of hers. That is where the growth happened. It is the only place it ever happens.
This is becoming one of the things I care about most with The Crone Stories.
Not every woman is living the same story, and not every act of courage looks the same. One takes on a school board. One sits down at a table for one. Another leaves a marriage, or starts a business, or gets on a plane, or goes back to school. Says yes. Says no. Begins again.
We do not have to live the same life to recognise ourselves in another woman's story. When women tell their stories, little threads run between us. Completely different circumstances, and then she says one thing and you think, oh. Me too.
I have had so many messages lately from women telling me how the stories on the podcast have landed on them. I feel fortunate to be the woman standing in the middle, gathering them, shaping them, passing them from one woman to another. It is not a role I take lightly.
There is something else I have been building.
Decades ago a client said something to me that I have never forgotten. She said, I wish I could just stick you in my back pocket, so you could remind me of all the things I need to remember as I go through my day.
The longer I sat with that one, the more I understood she was not only asking for reminders. She wanted somebody in there for the days she was flat on the floor, to tell her to keep going. And somebody who would give her the straight talk when she was busy telling herself a story about why she could not. Encouragement when she is down, and the truth when she needs it, which is usually the same afternoon.
That sentence stayed with me, because for years I have talked about having a toolbox. Breath. Movement. Meditation. Reflexology. Aromatherapy. Questions. Perspective. The things I reach for when life gets noisy, when my body feels strange, when everybody wants something from me, or when I cannot see my way above the quagmire.
When I ran the Leading Lady Challenge, a lot of you loved it, and a lot of you told me honestly that it felt like a big commitment. Leading Lady is not off the table, it will come around again. But it did get me thinking. What if you did not need another challenge? What if you just needed somewhere to reach when you needed something? Somewhere with a drawer for the noisy days, a drawer for the flat ones, and a drawer for the days you need somebody to tell you the truth.
That is what I have spent the past few weeks building. It is called The Crone's Cabinet, and it is very nearly ready. More on it soon.
She was not describing my fear. She was describing her own edge.
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A QUESTION TO CARRY
This week, the question is not about you.
Is there a woman in your life whose courage you have underestimated, because what she did would not have been hard for you?
Look at her again. And while you are there, look at yourself again too.
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If you want to hear what this sounds like out loud, the women on The Crone Stories have been handing me the things they once called no big deal.
In love, light and laughter,
Karen
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