Bravery Is A Mother

I used to think I was a coward—then I became a mother. Twin mother. Single mother. Divorced mother. Mother of two daredevil sons. Boy mother. Mother without a village. Mother who has traveled to the pit of despair and come out the other side. Rare mother (one who has raised a brave kid with a rare condition.) Post Traumatic Stress Survivor mother. Wanna-be-writer-mother. Motherhood forced me to find my brave. Because when you love your kid beyond all human reason—you find yourself doing all kinds of crazy things you never thought yourself capable of.

By Outside Magazine standards I still am a total coward. Wrapped in fear in a million different ways. You won’t find me backpacking the Pacific Coast Trail like Cheryl Strayed, or bungie jumping, camping, or eating sushi. I'm afraid of flying, skiing, dying alone, of my teeth falling out because I don’t floss enough, of the mess in my garage and that my teenagers might really hate me for the rest of my life. I’m afraid of being too afraid to publish my memoir before I die. I’m afraid my writing might suck and I’m afraid that I will one day be in the hospital and no one will tell me I have a big black hair on my chin.

Getting Ketamine Infusion for PTSD, 2024 by Dr Kaveh, Clarus Health

But in the seventeen years of being a mother, I have faced terrors I never thought I could face—and somehow I have stood up again and again.

There is a Japanese expression:

Fall down 7, Stand up 8.  

If i ever get another tattoo this would probably be it. Sometimes when I feel really scared, or hopeless I remember that despite the falls, I do somehow always wake up and am still breathing or some extraordinary human makes me laugh—and suddenly it feels as if life is bearable again. Some days I feel so bleak that life feels like a thousand pound iceburg. I’ve worried that the kids will never stop vomiting, or that I’ll never find a cure for their ailments, or they’ll never stop thinking that I totally suck. The next moment—they look at me, wrap their arms around me and say, “I love you.” Or the dog jumps on my lap. Or like yesterday awe just hit me when I pushed myself on my paddle board through a cold Bay Area rainstorm to find that a flipping rainbow actually fell out of the sky right in front of me.

The friends and adopted pit crew who have sustained me through the thick and thin of this brutal journey called motherhood—have told me that I’m brave. Could this be true?

My Mother-Bravery list: I’ve pushed the boys seventy-five pound twin stroller through miles and miles of San Francisco sidewalk while singing every rendition of every Broadway musical number until they finally stopped howling and fell asleep, tiny feet sticking out from under my Mexican blanket. I’ve stood up to fancy doctors who man-splained me and doubted my maternal gut and the hours of research I’ve done. I have fought until I found the right doctor, or until I found the treatment. I dared to leave a failing marriage with two tiny boys in tow. I rebuilt a moldy leaking house when my heart was cracked in half. I learned to ice skate again at the age of forty-something when my sons started ice hockey. I have woken up at five am to get my sons to the ice rink or the horse barn when I’d rather have stayed in bed. I’ve survived more heartbreaks than I can count—sure that each one would break me—and yet they did not. I’ve woken through the nights to hold vomit buckets, to soothe away the nightmares, to deliver glasses of water. I’ve injected Epi pens when one of my boys was going into anyphyactic shock and I’ve stayed calm-ish in the face of more 911 emergencies than I would care to count. I’ve survived the loneliness of being a single mother during a pandemic, the only single mother in a school full of seemingly-picture-perfect nuclear families —and I’ve held space for mothers going through struggles even harder than my own. (Join my Support Circle for Mothers/Caregivers of Children with Rare Conditions)

Usually the bravery of a mother is invisible—and yet it shows up minute by minute each day when we choose to be patient during our child’s tantrum in the aisle at the grocery store, or when they are screaming in pain and we say “I’m here for you.” When we watch our kids skateboard down the street without a helmet and pray they will come back alive. Or when we get the phone call that they were hit by a car, or that they have gotten their sorry asses into big trouble—or they are hanging out with a dangerous crowd or that they did something god-awful-stupid (as we too did at their age)—and we take a deep breath and say, “thank you for telling me the truth. Let’s figure out how to repair this mistake.”

This is the invisible mother-bravery that no one else sees. This is the kind of bravery that rivals that of a solider in the battlefield. There are no purple hearts for mothers who know how to insert a G-tube or who bite their tongue when their kid says “I hate you.” Yet I believe that the courage of a fierce mother is as brave, as bold, as fierce, as powerful as any of those bad ass Olympic athletes or marathon runners or soldiers in battle.

One year ago when I was in the midst of the deepest darkest throes of the hardest moment I’ve ever had to face— my beloved Aunt Laura said to me, “You’re so brave.” My mentor and friend Deirdre, told me, “You’re so brave.” My beloved sister-friend Deborah, told me “You’re so brave.” Dr. Kaveh the dashing Ivy League anesthesiologist who held my knee while he administered IV Ketamine for my PTSD told me “You’re so brave.” 

“You think so?” I whispered. Didn’t they know that I am the little sister who always whined at the top of the mountain—wait up! I can’t do it! Help! That before coming crashing down the mountain in a puffy purple snowsuit and breaking at least one bone.

He said, “You took your sons alone to Yosemite during a pandemic. That’s brave!” We had just watched the movie Free Solo about the fearless rock climber Alex Honnold who free climbs without ropes. So I took my sons up to the top of half-dome despite the hot flashes and the adrenal fatigue crashes which forced me to stop every few miles—because I wanted them to know they can climb higher and harder than they think they’re capable of.

I remembered the red brown cliffs rising up around us. Just me and the open road and my sons and public radio. As the needle went into my arm I who am afraid of losing control whispered to myself, I am brave, I am brave, I am brave.  

What kind of brave are you?