138. Being Present Is Enough

Being brave and courageous is not always about slaying dragons or telling someone off. Sometimes it’s just about standing still, and being present. 

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

Nora: I’m Nora McInerny and it’s going to be okay. And this podcast is a group project where every day we find an okay thing and bring it to you, or you bring it to us. 

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Ashton: So back in 2019, my husband and I. gave our oldest son, Louie, one of those customized kids books. It’s one of those things where you decide, you can tell them, their skin color and hair color and eye color and they insert your child’s name into this story and this one in particular, it wasn’t like one long story.

It was it was like 12 short stories and we Titled Louie’s Customized Book, The Adventures of Louie and Hank is Louie’s younger brother. And the reason we gave Louie this book is because just a couple months before that, Hank had died. Hank died in 2019. He was a year and three weeks old.

And we gave Louie this book to say hey, like These are all the things that you and Hank are gonna get to do one day in heaven. Cause that’s what our family believes. I love this book. It’s really precious to me. I love to see them together, like doing things. And a couple months after we got Louie this book, Louie and I were reading one of the stories.

And this one was on fear. Every short story has a principle that it covers and this one was on scary stuff, and the picture in it is of Louie and Hank, and they’re standing, they’re holding hands, and they’re looking into this dark room and you can’t see exactly what they’re looking at, but spiky vines and tentacles and nightmare elements and Louis looked up at me and he said, Mom, what does courage mean?

Because that, the story had said courage. And I said it’s like bravery, but I think with bravery, like you’re not afraid of something that is scary, but with courage, you are afraid, but you do it anyways. And Louis said, but they’re not doing anything. And I said they’re standing there, they’re looking at it, they’re not running away.

And I said that just out of like simple observation, but as I said, it struck me that sometimes that’s what courage looks like. Sometimes courage is just standing still. Sometimes courage is simply not running away and facing the scary thing. And I remember that. I think of that story a lot.

And I really love it, and in just a couple weeks, it’s gonna be Hank’s birthday. He should be turning five, and he’s not. He only turned one. And then, three weeks after that, we’re gonna cross four years without him. So this time of year is… It’s intense for me. It stirs up all sorts of things

Every year has been different. But something that is consistent is that I feel this need to make these days something grand. I know that’s just me being his mom and wanting to give him the attention that he deserves. But I can’t win. I’ll never do enough on those days to like make them good or make them make everything okay.

So I think of this story and I’m going to be thinking of this story and I’m going to be reminding myself that, simply existing is allowed to be challenging and it’s allowed to feel hard and it’s allowed to feel scary and I don’t have to do anything. anything for these days. I don’t have to earn, Hank’s honor.

I can just exist and I can just be with these days and being present is allowed to be enough. And also if I’m not present, if I totally check out, that’s fine too, I’ll add that on. But sometimes courage is just standing still and just not running away. That is my thing that makes me feel like maybe it’s going to be okay.