Courage

Yesterday I was talking to a friend who remarked on my courage in the past few years.

"You blew up your marriage and your family because you knew your son needed help," he said. "That took a tremendous amount of courage. Many people get stuck and stay in untenable situations. You didn't. You took a chance and made a change."

Awwww... It is nice to hear from an outside friend how far I have come in the past two years. I am also starting a new job in two weeks. My current employer said they don't value data, and my role there was as a data analyst. I could have fought and argued and bitched, but that would not have changed the fact that the company changed directions. Instead of trying to control a situation I could not control, I changed. That also took courage. The old me might have sulked and pouted for awhile. (Okay, I did do some sulking and pouting. I was irritable and unreasonable at times, but not as bad as I might have been.) I updated my resume, my LinkedIn profile and told lots of people I was looking for a new job. And voila! A new job found me.

I am currently reading Ladies of the House: A Modern Retelling of Sense and Sensibility by Lauren Edmondson and I came across a few lines that resonated with me:

• "Nothing forces us to know what we don't want to know except pain." -- Aeschylus
• "...nothing good in this world was made so by a woman keeping her mouth shut."

Pain. No one likes pain, and yet sometimes it is our best teacher, and indicator that change is needed. 

And speaking up, which also means taking action when action is necessary, versus staying quiet and meek.