Meg’s List for Courage
I have been asking my friend and WF&S coach, Meg Robertson, to write a blog about Courage.
I think she has a lot of it and I imagined she would have a lot to say. Meg is a mom to Nate and Olivia, wife to Rollin who is a police officer and hostage negotiator with CMPD.
Meg was also recently diagnosed with breast cancer and chose a double mastectomy. The same week she learned of her new cancer, Meg told her story in the media because she didn’t want other women to skip their annual mammograms this Covid year and be blindsided with bad news next year.
Although she is also a writer currently working on writing her first book, Meg didn’t exactly send me a blog on the subject of Courage. When she sat down to write about it, what came to Meg instead was a list of things it takes to have courage.
It started with simple things she probably thought about for Nate and Olivia:
Ride a bike.
Learn to swim.
Get a shot.
Run for student council.
Ride the big roller coaster.
Raft whitewater for the first time.
Be the first person to say hello.
Ask someone out.
Break up with someone.
Learn how to drive.
And moved to more adulting moments that require courage:
Move away from home.
Start a new job.
Be fired.
Fire someone.
Change careers.
Find your voice in a board room, especially if you are one of a few women.
Become an entrepreneur.
Rent office space for your new business.
Buy your own home, especially if you’re doing it without a partner.
Learn how to use a chainsaw or other power tools.
Skinny dip.
Say yes when someone asks you to marry them.
Actually, say I do.
And then to experiences that stretch us outside our comfort zones:
Join a group of new people like a writing group.
Read what you wrote in front of a new writing group.
Travel alone to a foreign country.
Go backpacking in the wilderness.
Sign up for your first 5k, or half marathon, or marathon, or triathlon.
Show up at the starting line of that race, realize you might lose, and compete anyway.
Ask someone for money for your non-profit, especially if it’s $1 million.
And then to the much, much tougher things life throws at us.
Come out of the closet.
Face a mental illness.
Battle an addiction.
Go through a divorce.
File bankruptcy and begin again.
Live in a house with Domestic Violence.
Live on the streets.
Be shot at and choose to go back to work the next day.
Run into a burning house.
Lose a baby and get up the next day.
Hold someone you love after they’ve experienced great loss.
Adopt Children.
Face and fight cancer.
Tell someone that they are dying.
Perform surgery and save their life.
Lose someone you love, and keep loving anyway.
She finished with three ways to live with Courage.
Practice Radical Compassion.
Be Wildly Generous.
To know you won’t be here forever and use your time here wisely.
What’s on your list for Courage?
What have you had to face?
And if you won’t be here forever, how do you want to use your time?
- Kathy & Meg
Meg Robertson is a certified life coach and nonprofit consultant with Meg Robertson Coaching Although she doesn’t consider herself an athlete, she finished an Ironman competition to prove anyone can do anything.
Kathy Izard is the founder of Women | Faith & Story, an online community of women leaders and learners who want to Do Good and Dream Big.