COURAGE

H.E.R. DEFINITION
COURAGE is showing up before we feel ready, wobbly pep talk and all. It is what carries us through the door when certainty never comes.

I got married at 21. Twenty-one, y'all. I had never really dated. Never had a boyfriend to speak of. So thirty-two years and one marriage later, when I found myself separated and staring down my very first post-divorce date, I was feeling bold. I can do this, I told myself. I made the match, we chatted, we picked a place. Easy.

Then I got to the parking lot.

I sat there in my car, and before I could even get the door open, I caught myself doing the exact thing I'd spent thirty-two years doing without even noticing, worrying more about him than about me. Was I dressed right for him. Would he like me. I sat there giving myself the pep talk. You are worthy. Just be yourself. Calm down and be a grown woman.

It didn't work. LOL.

I went in anyway, wobbly pep talk and all.

Here's the thing nobody tells you about dating again at 57 after 32 years of marriage. You don't just show up rusty. You show up with zero original parts. I had never done this. Not really. I went from my parents' house to a husband's house. I had never sat across from a stranger and had to be just me, no we, no history, no shorthand. Just me, deciding in real time what to say and how to be.

So when I walked in and sat down across from him, I noticed myself being overly aware. Overly careful. I was thinking hard about what to order. Not what I actually wanted, but what would look right. What would be the right drink, the right amount of food, the right amount of laughing. I was performing worthiness instead of just being worthy. Same pattern, brand new man.

But somewhere in the middle of that date, something small shifted. I remember thinking, he saw me. On the app, before any of this. We chatted. He knew what he was walking into, and he still showed up to meet me in person. So this is okay. Calm down, girl. And then, and I'm going to be honest because that's the only way I know how to do this, I told myself, you are the prize, girl. I know how that sounds. But I needed to hear it, and there was nobody else in that restaurant who was going to say it for me. So I said it to myself.

By the end of that date, I had landed somewhere I didn't expect. I decided, I can do this. Not that I had it figured out. Not that the food-and-drink performance anxiety was cured. Just that I could sit across from a stranger, let him get to know me, and get to know him back, and survive it. That was the whole win. Survive it and still be standing.

Now, if you are looking for me to tell you exactly what to do with your own first date, your own first hard thing, I have to be honest with you. I am probably not the one to ask. I got married at 21 with no dating experience. Most women I talk to have more practice at this than I ever did. What I had, and what I think a lot of us have more of than we realize, was not confidence. It was courage that showed up bewildered. I did not know what I was doing. I did it anyway. Imperfectly.

That date was not perfect. It was fine. It was actually just fine, nothing more dramatic than that. But something about doing that hard, unfamiliar thing once, wobbly and overly aware and half convinced I was going to blow it, made the next one a little easier. And the one after that a little easier still. I am still out here, still dating, still figuring it out. I do not have a formula for you. What I have is proof that you do not need one.

I keep coming back to a phrase that has followed me through more than one season of my life. I can do hard things. I do not have to have it all figured out. I just have to keep moving forward. That is what COURAGE has looked like for me lately. Not bold, not fearless, not put together. Just a woman in a parking lot, giving herself a pep talk that does not fully work, and going in anyway.

If you are sitting in your own version of that car right now, whatever that car looks like for you, I want you to know something. You do not have to feel ready. You just have to be willing to be a little bewildered and go in anyway. That is not weakness. That is COURAGE. And it counts, even when it is wobbly. Especially when it is wobbly.