The one ingredient they need: bravery
Young women will survive through their words.
When I was in my middle-20s, my life had stalled. My job in Topeka, Kansas was uninspiring and boring and just plain terrible. My creative boyfriend, in grad school eight states away, was building a career in clay. My family did not support this relationship and it made being around them difficult.
I was deeply unhappy, both professionally and personally. To make a change, I decided to move from Kansas to Arizona to be with my boyfriend, now my husband of 26 years, so I could at least have one portion of my life in place.
No one in my immediate family supported my desire to move. They didn’t see the need for me to move to Arizona. Especially for him. Especially when I didn’t have a job lined up beforehand. They were always so practical.
However, there was one person who supported my decision to move: my grandmother. One day when my mother told her of my plans to move, Grandma replied with, “Well, I guess you’ll have to let her go.” Simple as that. She apparently was not fazed by my decision that everyone else in my family thought was ludicrous and ill-timed.
My grandmother was brave. Here was a woman who had ridden alongside my grandfather in a Model T to California in 1928. On dirt roads. From Missouri. Here was a woman who had lost both of her teenage brothers to a barnstorming accident when she was 21 and, somehow, carried on. Here was a woman who, one day when I called to visit over the phone, had just been outside in her front yard killing a snake with a garden hoe. Looking back on it now, it makes sense that she would have been supportive of my Arizona choice.
I did eventually move to Arizona. It was a good and brave thing to do… a reflection of my own attempt at something new, daring and, to my traditional Midwestern family, unconventional.
The bravery that my grandmother and I shared reminds me of some students in my middle school language arts classes… a handful of courageous girls struggling with their lives.
The middle school years are tough for everyone, including for these students. After all, it’s difficult to puzzle through your personal identity, to learn who you are, to discover what you’re made of. For some, it’s a daily battle fraught with ever-shifting social pressures, family expectations, and intense self-doubt.
Whether they are fighting depression, anxiety, strained family relationships, or unhealthy habits, some of these students wisely rely on words to cope. They often share their writing with me via Google Docs. Audacious and honest poetry, essays, and stories about their lives help them navigate with courage through these years that, while joyful and ebullient for some, are tumultuous and tense for many more. And because they possess the desire to write (and the discipline to actually do it), I am hopeful they will survive and ultimately triumph.
Just as I saw my way through my mid-20s troubles, and just as my grandmother survived her hardships, I am confident my students will do the same… if they continue to call on and use the one ingredient they need: bravery.
