Courage Looks Different Up Close
How one woman's quiet strength became the blueprint for understanding true courage.
Courage Looks Different Up Close
By Alicia Calhoun
Courage is an interesting thing.
Most people think they’ll recognize it when they see it.
That it arrives loudly.
Confidently.
Fearlessly.
But I don’t think courage always looks that way.
To me, courage looked like my mother.
A woman brave enough to reunite our small family in a country where the language was foreign and the money was scarce. A woman who didn’t know exactly how we would make it, only that we had to keep moving forward.
That is courage.
I was only two years old at the time, so I don’t remember it firsthand. But I grew up hearing the story over and over again, in both English and Spanish. And every version carried the same truth underneath it:
She was terrified.
But she did it anyway.
That’s the part about courage people don’t talk about enough.
Sometimes courage doesn’t feel courageous when you’re living it. Sometimes it just feels necessary. Like survival. Like responsibility. Like putting one foot in front of the other because stopping simply isn’t an option.
I think I was blessed in a unique way—by not being taught courage through definition, but through experience. Through watching it live in living color before I was even old enough to understand what I was witnessing.
And what courage means to one person may feel ordinary to another.
For some, courage is standing on a stage.
For others, it’s walking away.
For some, it’s starting over with nothing but faith and determination.
For others, it’s surviving a season nobody else could see.
You never really know what courage means until it arrives at your own doorstep. Literally.
I believe we are all shaped by the courage we were raised around… or sometimes by the absence of it. And that shaping doesn’t only happen in childhood. Life has cycles. We walk through different versions of ourselves at different stages, and each season asks something different from us.
That’s life.
And looking back now, I realize there were so many moments where I was being courageous long before I ever called it that.
Changing careers.
Starting over.
Building.
Leaving.
Trusting my instincts.
Continuing forward when fear would have been easier.
At the time, I didn’t think of myself as brave.
I honestly thought I was just surviving. Just doing what needed to be done. Just putting one foot in front of the other.
But maybe that’s what courage actually is.
Not the absence of fear.
Not perfection.
Not certainty.
Just movement despite it all.
And today, when I look in the mirror, I finally allow myself to say it out loud:
You were courageous too.
Powerful by nature.
Soft by choice.
— Alicia Calhoun
