The Cowardly Lion

The pin of courage in the 1939 movie Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz

For the last couple of weeks, since my birthday actually, I've hit a rather hard patch. It all came to a head Easter Sunday evening with an unexpected email regarding the issue of the damage to my home caused by the neighboring leach field. Long story short, I found out that certain folks had been talking about it since January, making decisions, and voting against mediating without asking me to present my side of the story. Talk about feeling misrepresented, unsafe, unprotected, and alone. I struggled to think about how best to speak up. Luckily Tegan came to my rescue and said I should respond by telling the truth: that I had not been asked to a HOA meeting about the issue or to vote, that I was left out of the discussions, that the facts were not all presented, but that I wished for the opportunity to meet and discuss. Seems so simple doesn't it? But it wasn't because I was facing fear and felt bullied.

I felt like the Cowardly Lion.

As many of you know, for 16 years or so, I've been working on the issue of gender-based violence through the game we created at the Emergent Media Center with Population Media Center and the UN, BREAKAWAY. The basic premise of the narrative game is that the two pre-teen female characters in the game are being bullied by the pre-teen captain of the soccer team. As the player, you are the character needing to figure out who to side with. Raina, a star soccer player, is being bullied and yet is courageous. The younger Hanna is being intimidated and is fearful. You need to decide and learn how to be courageous.

Hanna standing up to the bully, Tal.

It's kind of like the Cowardly Lion needs to do: face his fears and be courageous. 

Throughout my life, in my first marriage, as a single mom, when my parents took ill, in my career building unique degrees, taking students to some of the poorest places in the world to work on BREAKAWAY, and then facing Jim's cancer, care taking, and death, I've repeatedly had to find my courage. Some folks would call that being strong. During my divorce when my mother first understood what I had been facing, she brought all the ghosts out of the family closet and said to me, "Ann, you come from a long line of strong women".

It's kind of like the Cowardly Lion being "strong" but is that courage?

In the first month prior to our actual first date, Jim and I had this email conversation:

Jim: The bruises, the dust, maybe the Germans have it right with their expression, "what doesn't kill you will strengthen you." Or, maybe the response to that should be "who the hell ever wanted to be that strong?"

ME: I believe my grandmother used to say "It's a great life if you don't weaken". But I agree with "who the hell ever wanted to be that strong?" sentiment :-) I HATE it when people tell me that I'm "one of the strongest people they know..."

Right now, more than anything today, I miss how I was with Jim—not being required to be strong or courageous. I could just be me, and I could be soft, and I could be frightened, and I could cry. And he was always there to hold me up and I was always there to hold him up. And from there, well that's joy.

Miss this—being silly and soft and held

In this last year of Covid isolation, care taking, profound grief, and trying to find out who I am now, I've become best friends with anxiety. Perhaps this might surprise some but I rarely experienced that before. Yet the day Jim died, I crumpled. All that courage and strength that allowed me to care for him flipped over. I couldn't leave the house alone. I couldn't walk down the street. I couldn't drive. I couldn't even pick up a phone for about 4 months. Visiting my Aunt MaryJo, then my friend Judy, driving Jim's little red Honda, walking with numerous beautiful friends, having friends support me both in my grief and to address the house damage, skiing that first time with Kelly and Stephanie who got me on the mountain, these all changed that. I began slowly to feel fearless. I had lost the most important things in my life—my husband and my identity. What did I have to fear now? My death? I might have welcomed that. Ah but grief! It's exactly then that the nightmares began and I woke up in extreme anxiety unable to move at all. Even still every morning getting out of bed and every evening going to bed alone are calls for me to be courageous, to start again, to face life without Jim, to face reconstructing my identity.

So what made the Cowardly Lion become courageous?

As most of us know, he always was. He just didn't realize it. Here is what I'm discovering about it all. Courage is not about strength or fearlessness. As in BREAKAWAY, the bully seems strong and is fearless but he is not courageous, he's a narcissist who gets his power by bullying others and bending them to his will.  It's no coincidence that in the Wizard of Oz, the Cowardly Lion's companions are the Tin Man (love), the Scare Crow (wisdom), and Dorothy (who embodies all three of these traits plus innocence). Even the Wizard is important as he represents the confidence that recognition by another and their belief in us gives us. 

BREAKAWAY in Palestine spearheaded by the courageous Mahmoud Jabari

Because if you really look at courage, it is about standing on love and wisdom. Wisdom gives one the ability to question, to look for answers, and to discern what is the correct line of action. Love is what fuels courage and holds it up. Courage rightfully is about acting on love—of self, of others, and of community. I see this personally in my friends and of course my beloved Jim as we face the mortality of ourselves and those we love: Tammy, Addi and her family, Liz, Tim and Candy, Ellen, Lanie, Bob, Peggy and Al, Mollie, and numerous others. History underscores this over and over: Harriet Tubman and the underground railroad, Nicholas Winton saving the children from the Nazis, Nelson Mandela in South Africa, Mother Teresa in Calcutta, and countless other individuals and groups. That last word "groups" is very important as none of us is alone and it's the support of others that allows us to be courageous. Working with the young athletes at Vermont Adaptive and Jim's love of his family and friends fueled his courage. Every day it is my friends, family, those of you who read my thoughts, and not to be forgotten, my pups, who keep me going.

Tammy's beautiful and brave Addi with her Fire Chief Mickey facing her own incurable disease all the while loving her family and her Essex Fire crew.

But courage like other emotions is ephemeral. One day it is there, one day it is not. Last Thursday I was an immoveable mess sitting on my couch most of the day much like I was when I first lost Jim. The realization that I would never hold him again was just too much. What often gets me up and out during my grief is a photo that my friend Kelly took of Jim on his very last ski run. Folks might not know this but at that time my beloved husband could no longer take the cold so he was freezing, cancer caused incontinence so that meant wearing Depends, the neuropathy from the chemo meant that his hands and feet were in constant pain, and due to late stage cancer he was incredibly weak. Yet he skied that last time with us, celebrating life and love of the mountain. Every morning I wake to that photo now on my bedroom wall and say to myself "for you Honey, I am going to do my best to survive and to follow your example of courage and love". 

His last run and my daily dose of courage.

Monday morning after a sleepless night due to the email I had recieved, I was filled with anxiety again. As my day started, I reached out to one of my neighbors who is a good friend, I thought about Tegan, I thought about Jim, and I thought about my friend Judy and I realized that the only way to to face my loneliness and fear was to lovingly address the situation. I wrote to the community from a place of love and empathy. Folks have a lot going on these days—not just me but everyone! I needed to find my courage and offer my friendship and the courtesy of responding with an offer to meet. It was hard, it required me to be courageous. I am not strong, I need holding up. Some folks reached back, some turned me down but in the end, I knew I was not alone entirely, that my neighbors are the good people I thought they were before recieving the email. I have hope they will eventually act from that place too.

That's what the Cowardly Lion discovered too. That through love for his little clan and his bigger world of Oz, he could lay down his life for love. That is courage. 

The Cowardly Lion as illustrated by William Wallace Denslow (1900)