Courage to forge your own path

Posted on by WritingfromtheheartwithBrian

My mom held tight to my arm this past Saturday as I helped her to her seat and wheeled her walker out of the way. She doesn’t get around quite like she used to when she was a younger woman, but when the wedding DJ started playing uptempo club music, I joked with her that she should be out on the dance floor, showing off her best moves.

My mom is used to my silly jokes and sarcasm and simply said, “Oh Brian, you wouldn’t want me up on that dance floor. I might make you look bad.”

A different life

My mom has come a long way. Throughout my life I’ve long looked at my mom and then shook my head thinking about what almost was. I’ve written about her a few times on my blog. My mom grew up Pennsylvania Amish. The Amish religion values faith, manual labor, and discipline. Her family had no car or electricity, living instead a simple life with few modern conveniences. Amish men typically wear plain shirts with no patterns and long sleeves, black pants, held up with suspenders, and straw hats. Old Order Amish women wear layered dresses, aprons, and white bonnets.

My grandfather worked as a carpenter and owned a farm, growing corn and had a small herd of dairy cows. My grandmother kept the house full of kids, 12 to be exact, and managed everything else. My mom was headed down that same path.

However, when she became old enough, she left the Amish church. 

“It is not the strength of the body that counts, but the strength of the spirit.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien

Making a tough decision

We’re writing about courage this month on the Heart of the Matter. As a young kid, I grew up admiring tough guys, soldiers who sacrificed their blood, sweat, and tears for their comrades; underdog athletes who found themselves looking up at Goliath and won; and statesmen like the Founding Fathers who took on enormous risk to unite the colonies, revolt against Great Britain, and establish the United States.

Oh, I still consider them to all be courageous, but they’ve got nothing on my mom. For my money, they’re weaklings compared to her, they’re a shirtless Justin Bieber standing up against muscle-bound Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson on a sandy, resort beach.

When my mom turned 16, something clicked. She had a chance to make a decision for herself and she took it, choosing a different path. For her, it was a no-brainer.

“Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.” — Brené Brown

A healing spirit

Several years earlier, my mom watched her sister die from cancer. She took offense that church leaders stood in the way of her parents getting her sister help. The Amish Bishop questioned her parent’s faith because they took her to several different hospitals and sought out medical assistance. (The Amish religion doesn’t forbid its members from seeking medical attention, but many Amish are reluctant to do so unless absolutely necessary, relying instead of folk remedies and natural antidotes. They believe “God alone heals.”)

After living through that experience, my mom made a promise to herself that she would never let someone else get in the way again of helping someone she loved. When the time came to make her choice of joining the church, my mom put the naysayers out of her mind and carved a new path.

She went to live with a family friend, who was Mennonite — like Amish, but a little less structured and opposed to modern technology — stopped dressing in black dresses and white bonnets, left the community, and started a new life. She didn’t have a lot of money at first, but took on odd jobs to take care of herself.

Since she never officially joined the church, my grandparents didn’t have to excommunicate or “shun” her. She was the first child in her family to leave the Amish order. A couple of her siblings in the decades to come would follow her path. 

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” ― Nelson Mandela

A mild-mannered rebel

When my mom made her decision to leave, she lost a few friends and created some ill feelings, but she kept her faith and belief in something better. She believed it would have been a tougher choice to stay. In short, she was a rebel.

Several years later, she would meet my father in an auto parts store, where he worked part-time. My father, back from serving in the Army, and my mother hit it off, would date, and later marry, building a life together.

I’ve thought often over the years on what it means to have courage. Society generally points to John Wayne, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Swartzeneggar-types as having courage, but the examples that jump out at me are the quiet acts of courage. I think of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat; teachers and parents I read about recently who stood up to a local book banning effort; and volunteers who give of their time serving on local fire and ambulance crews, protecting our communities.

I think of my mother standing up saying in her own humble way, “No, I will forge my own path.”

What does quiet courage mean to you? If you were in my mom’s situation, could you have left your parents and church and everything you knew and gone your own way?

……..

Please join in on the discussion on the HoTM site. In addition, please visit my personal blog at www.writingfromtheheartwithbrian.com to read my companion piece. In addition, you can follow me on Instagram at @writingfromtheheartwithbrian.

All the best, Brian.

47 thoughts on “Courage to forge your own path”

  1. Pingback: What my life might have looked like – Writing from the Heart with Brian

  2. My heart is SO full reading about your mom and her courage, Brian. Thank you for sharing this powerful glimpse of someone who does, indeed, sound like a beautiful, “mild-mannered rebel”. 💕

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  3. What a roller coaster, Brian–Justin Bieber, Arnold Swartzeneggar, Rosa Parks, and Amish bishops all in one place! I appreciated the injection of some humor alongside the cancer diagnosis, distress of wondering if death could have been preventing, and your mother fleeing everything she’d ever know at just 16. She really is the epitome of courage, and it sounds like she’s lived a wonderful life following that act of courage. 🥰

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  7. Your mother was brave, but respectful. She didn’t just run away and live on the streets. She waited until she was the approved age to bow out before she sought to start a new life. Leaving the cocoon of her family, and perhaps alienating loved ones, had to be a difficult decision to make. Thank you for sharing your mother’s story. You must love her very much. 🙂

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    1. Yes, I’m always fascinated with how young she was. I don’t think her parents loved the idea but they respected her decision. I knew my grandparents growing up. We would visit every so often. I wouldn’t say we were close, but they cared about us. Definitely different lives!

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  8. I think your mom is someone to admire greatly Brian. What a tough decision in many ways, but I think her path shows an extreme amount of character as a person, but also as a female being raised in such a strict and perhaps oppressive community.

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    1. Yup, the funny thing, she didn’t talk much about it when I was a kid. As an adult, I started asking questions and that’s when she started talking about it. I think she’s a great woman. She didn’t have a great education but she’s the smartest, loving woman I’ve ever met.

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  9. I’m so impressed with your mother’s courage. Not only was she leaving her family and tight knit community, she needed to find a way to make a living and support herself with very little education and experience. I view my MIL as courageous. She left an abusive marriage with a baby and toddler. She got married a year after your mom left her family and religion. She worked a number of jobs and tried to complete college. My husband said he didn’t know another divorced parent back then and there was stigma against them.

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  10. Oh, I love your mom, Brian! It is so hard to stand up against what is expected and especially a whole community and family. Holy smokes – you’re right that Arnold has nothing on her. You’ve written such a wonderful portrait of you perfectly interspersed with such great quotes.

    I love that you call it quiet courage – she was walking her own path from a young age which is so inspiring!

    So, did she dance?

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    1. Yup, I didn’t really come to realize her courage until I was an adult … but I do vaguely remember whining as a kid about standing up gig myself in school and realizing how much of a jerk I must have been sounding to my mother… who had a lot bigger worries than oh someone might not like me for not having the right outfit or not saying the right thing. Ha ha, she’s definitely courageous.

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  11. Great read Brian! Coincidentally, I’m reading this from the parking lot of an Amish/Mennonite grocery. Is your mom by any chance from Lancaster County like me? It must’ve taken great courage for your mom to break free of her family’s traditions- big respect!

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    1. My grandparents lived in Lancaster County at various times over the years. For being Amish, they sure did move around a lot. We’d visit them often when I was real young. I vaguely remember visiting during a farm raising but she was in central PA towards Lewistown when she left home. Yes, I think she’s the most courageous person I know.

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  12. What a wonderful story of courage, Brian. I’m so glad that it had a happy ending for you all. It’s intriguing to imagine how life might have been had she not taken the road less traveled, isn’t it? I often wonder how my life might have been different had my father not died when I was two years old. 

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  13. Your mom truly was courageous, Brian. I can’t imagine how difficult that must have been for her. Our parents generation was raised to never question their faith.

    I often look at my mother the same way. She was one of the older children in an Irish Catholic family of 15. She left home at 16 and moved to Dublin, and then to England where she met and married my father. Then, at 40, my parents uprooted the family and moved us to Canada. Courage abounds!

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  14. Wow! That is courage. I think that courage is following that still small voice inside, even when it guides you to unpopular places and ways of being, which is what your mother did. And sometimes courage is biding our time until we’re able to follow our heart.

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  15. Going against the grain, particularly when conviction is driving one’s actions, is an admirable quality. I remember one time my 5th grade class read an article regarding weighing the pros and cons of logging with environmental protection. Like most issues, I can see both sides of the coin. I never tried to get the kids to think a certain way (not the job of a teacher), but I tried to encourage them to understand someone else’s views, even if they didn’t jive with their own. I always remembered one sixth-grade girl, typically on the quiet side, who courageously stuck to her opinions in the face of heavy opposition. It’s not important what side she was on, but it is critical that she had the courage to stick to her convictions.

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  16. What a great story. That is a great example of true courage and it must be mind boggling for you to think about the what ifs had your mom not made that choice… at such a young age!

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  18. Pingback: Well Said Saturdays – October 7 – The Heart of the Matter

  20. Your mother definitely had courage. My husband is from Pennsylvania, close to Amish county. I learned a great deal about them, and often watched their farm work with horses and wagons. What I learned from you is that the Amish commit to join the church (or leave) as young adults. So, your mother was not shunned since she never officially joined. I do know that leaving the church is a very brave and rare thing to do. You must be a very proud son! Thank you for including wonderful quotations in your post, too.

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    1. I’m not an expert but my understanding is if she had joined and then left, the church would have demanded that her parents treat her like an “exile.” I’m sure my mom’s decision caused them some pain, but they still loved her. I always respected them because one of my mom’s brothers joined and then left and they worked around the shunning rules. They still occasionally saw him. When I was little, we would visit my grandparents and they were always kind to us. They didn’t understand our life, but loved us. I wrote about them a few years ago. https://writingfromtheheartwithbrian.com/2022/10/19/what-i-remember-about-my-amish-grandparents/

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      1. Thank you for sharing your wonderful post and the things you remember about your grandmother. Yes, had your mom joined and left, she would have been shunned. So sad! I’m glad they worked around the rules for your uncle. My one vivid memory is attending the annual fiddler’s convention (can’t remember the Pennsylvania town) and seeing two Amish boys peeking in the barn door- when we were leaving there was a very angry Amish father standing up in his wagon driving the horses to get there. I always worried about those boys. All in all, the Amish are very kind and loving folks.

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