The Resolute Woman

Category: courage

  • Sit down quietly

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    resolutewoman
    in ,

    “I think when we don’t know what to do it’s wise to do nothing,” Maya Angelou once said. “Sit down quietly; quiet our hearts and minds and breathe deeply.” My friend Mary Ann recently gave me a copy of Maya Angelou’s Rainbow in the Cloud—The Wisdom and Spirit of Maya Angelou. I will share some…

  • Wild and free

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    resolutewoman
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    It’s August, almost the end of the summer. The vacation season is coming to a close. Sooner than we realize, we’ll begin the months of celebration with Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Be sure to make time before the end of August for a new adventure. And, remember the wisdom of Thoreau: “All good…

  • Good luck and staying power

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    resolutewoman
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    Sometimes success has much less to do with courage than “sheer good luck and staying power,” says Robyn Davidson, who writes about her journey across her native Australia with four camels and a dog in her book Tracks. Sometimes when I need inspiration, I return to a book I’ve already read—one about a Resolute Woman,…

  • Grit and grace

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    resolutewoman
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    Deborah Sampson was a member of George Washington’s Continental Army. Disguised as a man, she was the first woman to take a bullet for her country. She removed the musket ball and stitched up the wound herself because she feared that a doctor would discover that she was a woman. Meryl Streep told Sampson’s story…

  • Caution can be pathetic

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    resolutewoman
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    Goethe says that boldness is powerful. And, Mary Oliver, in her poem “Moments,” proclaims that caution can be pathetic. Here’s part of the poem. There are moments that cry out to be fulfilled…. Your heart is beating, isn’t it? You’re not in chains, are you? There is nothing more pathetic than caution When headlong might…

  • We all have felt other

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    resolutewoman
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    “Writing in a younger voice allowed me to name the thing without a name,” explained Sandra Cisneros in the introduction to the 10th anniversary edition of her book The House on Mango Street. The book is the story of a young girl growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. The thing without a name…

  • Living with yourself

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    resolutewoman
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    “Before I can live with other folks, I’ve got to live with myself,” Harper Lee once said. “The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.” Lee, who died recently, was the author of To Kill a Mockingbird.

  • Ruthless?

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    resolutewoman
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    “I think of Jeremy telling me I had to be ruthless to be a writer,” says Lucy Barton in Elizabeth Strout’s new book My Name Is Lucy Barton. “But, really, the ruthlessness, I think, comes in grabbing onto myself, in saying: This is me, and I will not go where I can’t bear to go…and…