~ 4 minute read.
Today’s blog is from the unsinkable Shona Grant. Her story of courage started in New Zealand and has continued for many decades in Melbourne and around the world.
Courage has always played a part in Shona’s life, from the courage to perform in theatre in her early life, to working as a social worker in Aotearoa and Australia, and more recently as a style icon living a colourful life with the courage to say: BOLDER not OLDER!
My first wave of courage: thank you Mum
The first time I thought about courage – although at just four years of age, I hadn’t really learnt the word – was when a huge wave knocked me over and I was sucked under into the bubbly, scary sea. I was at a beach called Caroline Bay in Timaru, New Zealand, where I was born.
I was trying to reach my cousins; trying to follow them because they had left me alone on the beach and I thought that was not fair. They had all gone into the water. I didn’t understand about the sea. I had never been to the beach and when my mother told me that my cousins were going, I pestered her to let me go: ‘I want to go too!’ Eventually, Mum caved in: “Well they can take you!” she yelled at me, put me in a dress and jammed one of her sunhats on my head. My uncle and cousins collected me.
I was freezing and frightened alone on the beach and even more so in the water. The fear of it was overwhelming and I started screaming. I was mostly screaming because I knew that I had messed up the ‘nice dress’ that Mum had put me into. My uncle who had also gone into the sea -!!- said they would take me home but first I needed to take off my wet dress. My cousin helped me and put me into her dress which was dry, but I hated it: I felt stupid as it dragged on the ground and people were staring.
Back home, I got no sympathy. Mum said: “Why did you go into the water? You should have been smart enough not to do that in your nice dress. You don’t have COURAGE! You should have stayed out of the water. You have to be brave to go into the sea.”
There was that new word which seemed to mean that something was wrong with me, but in fact it was the opposite: I was building courage from day one just to deal with my mother!
Another wave of courage: poetry
Another memory of ‘courage’ in my childhood relates to the era when autograph books were trending and we would compete to collect the best and most signatures and messages. I don’t remember who wrote it in MY book of words, but it was a poem about courage that has remained fixed in my mind ever since:
Life is mostly froth and bubble,
Two things stand like stone.
Kindness in another’s trouble,
Courage in your own.
Researching its provenance recently, I discovered the poet to be one Adam Lindsay Gordon. The simple messages of the words made so much sense to me back then. They still do.
The third wave: the courage to jump ship
I never thought about courage on this occasion because I just had to act. I happened to be on board a sinking ferry (the Wahine that sailed overnight between the North and South Islands of NZ) and I wasn’t thinking about being brave. I was very much ‘in the moment’ of listening to announcements, talking with a fellow passenger about the surreality of the situation and annoyed that the delayed arrival had caused me to miss a job interview that morning. I was not at all fearful, mostly frustrated about not having any sense of resolution: we were sitting and waiting – for what?
Thinking back – it’s hard to shift your mind to an event that occurred over 50 years ago – how I reacted was largely pragmatic. It wasn’t about how I was feeling, more about what I was doing or rather NOT doing. No choice but to go with the flow it seemed to me then, and on reflection, still.
I was sitting on the floor of the ferry’s B Deck lounge, chatting about whatever with the man beside me. I had already tried to go back to my cabin on a lower deck but was ordered back by a steward. I had noticed water at the bottom of the stairway. Sigh. Not long afterwards the ship suddenly lurched to my right, and people were flung across the lounge. My companion and I managed to hold onto a table that was fortunately firmly attached to the deck. Announcements advised that we needed to ‘abandon ship’! To me, it all just seemed incredible. My new shipmate said: ‘We need to go outside. We are going to have to get off’. Being on the high side of the ship’s now sloping deck, meant that we had to slide down to be near the water and jump who knew where? While this today sounds like a courageous act, it did not occur to me as being anything other than the way to go. The two of us bumped and slipped across the treacherous wooden deck. We reached the railing at the other side. The sea was not far below. My shipmate was pragmatic: he said: ‘We have to jump. I’ll go first and you follow me’. All I could see over the side was churning water. Next thing he was gone!
I thought: Oh. Now it’s me. I could see a rubber raft to my left, so I threw my handbag towards it and then myself. The downward plunge seemed endless, the water freezing. Yet weirdly I did not feel fear. Now I see how it was likely some innate courage that kept me going. Whenever I relate the experience, people invariably say: ‘You are so brave!’ ‘What courage!’.
Landing back in Wellington recently, I was quite thrown because we bypassed the airport and flew close to that same sea I had been in. It brought back the memories.
When I reflect on the event after all this time, it shows there are submerged feelings, just like the Wahine. It’s maybe a reason I cannot go out of my depth in sea water.
Two serendipitous family mottos: Stand Fast and Sans Peur (without fear).
But ultimately, it’s all about the courage to: jump ship!
Shona’s energy for life and passion for authenticity is evident in every interaction with her; including in her words above. She leans into and lives her family motto – Stand Fast and Sans Peur – fully.
I am grateful to be able to learn of her stories of courage and to be able to share them with you.
@CourageChick
Leading with courage 