Since the Writing as Healing group happened to meet on November 11, Memorial Day, we focused on the theme of courage.
We discussed the meaning of courage: physical courage, taking risks, doing or facing difficult things, or sticking with something when it would be easier to turn away. Then we wrote on this prompt:
Write about an example of courage that has affected your life. As always, feel free to follow whatever path the writing takes, even if it seems to be going off topic.
After discussing what participants had written, we considered the following quotations, which might serve as prompts for further writing:
“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”– Nelson Mandela
“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” — Winston Churchill
“Courage is grace under pressure.” — Ernest Hemingway
“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
“Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace.” — Victor Hugo
“There are so many ways to be brave in this world. Sometimes bravery involves laying down your life for something bigger than yourself, or for someone else. Sometimes it involves giving up everything you have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved, for the sake of something greater.
But sometimes it doesn’t.
Sometimes it is nothing more than gritting your teeth through pain, and the work of every day, the slow walk toward a better life.
That is the sort of bravery I must have now.”
― Veronica Roth
