Think8 Women

Twelve invited fairies bestowed magical gifts at the baby’s birth– that she would be the most beautiful person in the world, have the temper of an angel, sing like a nightingale and so on…

As I sat watch in the night mid beeping monitors and busy staff, I wondered what gift I could bestow on this precious little girl about to arrive and light up our world.

I didn’t have an answer then, but I do now.

Courage.

It is the courage that women choose to live every day.

My friend, whose life work was obliterated in an international political maelstrom, has summoned the courage to carefully sort through the shards, trying not to cut herself as she pieces together new meaning and renewed purpose. Finding solace in her rich inner life she carries her professional load with her heart heavy, her head held high.

Courage. Calm courage to let go and move forward.

And the brave women who spoke up over the last weeks in the flare and glare of media, to reveal everyone’s favorite radio host as a ‘monster’. They have given all women the courage to take a stand, saying, ‘It stops here’.

Thursday night as my train rolled back to Montreal, a managing partner in a firm shared her ‘same-as’ story, one she rarely spoke of until this came out.  And I shared mine.

It was years ago, also a beloved CBC figure. It took heart-thumping courage to stop this ‘monster’ that had eviscerated so many. Twenty-three women before me had been silenced, terrified.

It stopped with me. The man was fired on five counts, legally charged on one. Professional blackballing was only part of the huge price I paid.

It takes huge courage to survive vampires of the soul.

Some acts of courage take place in private, alone.

One of the most outstanding, passionate CEO’s I know has gone through a year of refocusing her company. Painful restructuring. Redefining.  Firing. Hiring. Bleeding. You need steel courage when all the bucks stop at your desk. Tonight she wrote that she has broken through.

Keeping her hand cupped around the flame through the darkest hours until she can set the world on fire—and she will– that is courage.

Last night, rocked by the wanton greed of disease, I walked into the hospital room of a dear friend who has waltzed with cancer for two years. Chemo. Radiation. Radical lifestyle changes. Prayer. The tumors have now infiltrated her brain. We held on to each other and rocked and cried.

The serene courage of this mother and entrepreneur is the kind of inner strength women draw on to survive. Her strength makes us all more courageous.  She told me that she felt like the luckiest person alive. Baffled, I asked why. She smiled and said, “Because I am so loved by so many.”

Courage.  Indomitable courage.

Someday I will share these and many other stories, old and new, with my precious granddaughter Maevis Ann, aptly named after the Queen of the Irish Fairies.

I will tell her that the gift I wish upon her is that of courage– the courage to be fearless, the courage to live fully and the courage to love with her whole heart.

Nancy