On the sentence that stopped me at breakfast, and what it’s teaching me about leadership, reinvention, and the second fear that runs our lives.
My husband said something over breakfast this week that made me put down my fork.
“I’m not afraid of being afraid.”
I asked him to say it again. He did. Same words, same calm.
So, you’re not afraid of anything, I said.
That’s not what I said, he answered, patient with me the way he often is. I said I’m not afraid of being afraid.
And just like that, I was seven years old again.
There was a girl at my school who made my stomach hurt for weeks. I can still feel the particular dread of walking down a certain hallway, the way my breath would change, the way my hands would go cold. I wasn’t afraid of her, not really. Not when I think about it honestly. I was afraid of the way my body felt when she was near. The pounding. The buzz in my ears. The hot shame of being the one who was scared.
So, I shrank. Not because she was bigger. Because the fear was bigger than I wanted to let it be.
Sitting across from Vincent, I wondered who I might have been in that hallway if I had let the fear just be fear. If I hadn’t spent all my energy trying not to feel it. If I had walked up to her, heart pounding and palms damp, and done what needed to be done anyway. Slap her. But no, seriously, if I had just been still inside. Not calm. Stillness and calm are not the same thing. Still in the way a tree is still in the wind. Moving because it has to. Rooted because it was built to be.
I think I would have shown up as myself. And I think myself would have been enough.
The Second Fear
Here is what I am beginning to understand.
The distinction my husband drew at breakfast is the one that separates the women who step forward from the women who stay seated. Being afraid is a feeling. Being afraid of being afraid is a posture. The first is human and unavoidable. The second is what actually runs our lives.
We don’t flinch from the fire. We flinch from feeling the heat.
I have spent a career in rooms where the stakes were human lives. I led teams in Rwanda and Burundi. I signed my name to decisions that shaped how we do development work. I have stood in the quiet rubble of an institution I gave eighteen years to, watching it dismantled in months.
In every one of those rooms, the question was never whether I would feel afraid. I always felt afraid. The question was whether I would let the feeling of fear become a second problem on top of the first. Whether I would waste half my oxygen managing my own internal weather instead of meeting the moment in front of me.
Sometimes I managed it. Sometimes I didn’t. The difference showed up in my leadership every single time.
When I managed it, I spoke plainly, I decided quickly, I protected the people I was sent to protect. When I didn’t, I hedged. I softened. I rehearsed my sentences for days before I said them. I gave the institution what it wanted to hear instead of what it needed to hear. Not because I lacked courage. Because I was spending my courage on the wrong fight. I was fighting my own fear instead of the thing the fear was pointing me toward.
For the Woman at the Edge
And this is what I want to say to every woman standing at the edge of something.
The woman unsure. The woman starting the business at fifty-seven. The woman writing the book she was told no one would read. The woman walking out of the building with her box of things and no next chapter yet written.
You are not going to stop being afraid. That is not the assignment. The assignment is to stop being afraid of being afraid.
When the fear stops being the enemy, it becomes information. It tells you that you are near something that matters. That you are standing on the edge of your own growth. That your life is about to get larger, and your body knows before your mind does.
The goal was never to arrive at a fearless version of yourself. That version is a myth sold by people who have never actually done anything hard. The goal is to arrive at a version of yourself who can feel the full weight of fear and still move her feet.
What It Would Look Like
Imagine, for a moment, what our homes and offices and sanctuaries and boardrooms would look like if we were not afraid of being afraid.
The mother would speak the hard truth at the family table without weeks of rehearsal. The executive would give the feedback the team actually needed. The woman with the idea would start before she felt ready, because readiness was never the prerequisite. The daughter would set the boundary she has been circling for a decade. The leader would tell the truth about the institution even when the institution had the power to punish her for it. The girl in the hallway would lift her head and walk through.
None of them would be without fear. All of them would be without the second fear, the one that makes us smaller than we were made to be.
A Doctrine Over Eggs
Vincent didn’t know he was handing me a doctrine at breakfast. He was just describing himself. But I have been turning it over for days now, the way I turn over scripture, looking for the places where it catches the light.
I’m not afraid of being afraid.
Say it again. I am not afraid of being afraid.
I want that to be true of me. Not every day, not all at once. But enough of the time that my life starts to look different on the other side of it. Enough of the time that the woman I am becoming can look back at the seven-year-old in the hallway and tell her the truth. And enough of the time that I can hand my twelve-year-old daughter a different inheritance than the one I received.
Baby. Listen to me. You were never the problem. The pounding in your chest was never the problem. The problem was that somebody, somewhere along the line, taught girls like us to be ashamed of being ones who feel things. I am taking that shame off of you before it ever has the chance to settle. You are enough even when you are standing in fear. Fear is just an emotion. It is human, it is holy, and you can walk all the way through it.
I think it might be true for you too.
And to my hubby, thank you for being the wisest person I know. You teach me something almost every day. Lol.