Shannon Dingle - Living Brave: Lessons from Hurt, Lighting the Way to Hope

FOR LEE,

MY PARTNER

MY WORLD

MY SAFE

MY HOME

MY ECSTASY

MY COMFORT

EVERY GOOD THING

THANK YOU FOR TEACHING ME MY BELOVEDNESS

T his is not the book I planned to write.

I planned to write as a woman who had survived unimaginable trauma but lived into a mostly happily-ever-after. I planned to write from scars rather than wounds. I planned to walk with you down a path I had already traversed.

I planned for my husband to be alive.

I never planned for a week at the beach to end with organ donation paperwork. I never planned for Lee to be out with most of our kids, playing in the sand and water, as he had so many times before, when a wave hit him hard enough to slam his head to the ground, immediately breaking his neck, severing nerves controlling the lungs and heart, and causing enough swelling to cut off his airway. I never planned to go from the beach, shins still covered in sand from kneeling beside him as paramedics worked to do all they could, to the hospital and then back to the beach house as a widow rather than a wife. I never planned to have to tell my six children that Daddy was dead. I never planned to answer all the hard questions that would come in the following days and weeks and months (and years, Im sure, though we arent there yet). I never planned to say goodbye when we were both only thirty-seven years old.

I never planned to live so many stories Ive written in these pages.

He wasnt even supposed to die before me. My health is complicated; his wasnt. When we talked about the future, we both assumed I would die first. I was going to leave him, not the other way around.

But not in our thirties. Not when we had so much more left to do together. Not without seeing our kids grow up and become who God created them to be. Not right after a major promotion for him and a book deal for me, the first of many, I hope. Not with plans to visit Ireland again and to start a new stage of life together when our youngest turned eighteen the year we would turn forty-eight. We were going to do so many things.

As for me, I was going to write this book from the safety and stability of our relationship.

I cant write that book anymore. That book died in the ICU in Wilmington, North Carolina, when Lee did. Parts of it will survive the edits and rewrites, just as parts of his body live on: his heart in the chest of a man in his forties, his liver in a lawyer and husband in his seventies, and one of his kidneys in the body of a mom of five in her forties who loves cooking and yoga, a woman with whom Id probably be friends if we met in a casual setting. (Well, maybe. I like eating and wearing yoga pants, so thats nearly the same, right?)

The first draft of my manuscript was almost done, and then it wasnt. It was rich and true and beautiful. But this grief I carry changes everything, so I found myself reworking almost everything. With such a catastrophic loss, theres a before and after.

My before draft didnt match my after reality.

This is not the book I planned to write, but Im giving myself permission to write the book I need to write. Im giving myself permission to show up with my words to you, my dear reader, and to tell the truth, even the messiest and most shattered pieces of it. Im giving us all permission to come to these pages with all of ourselves because every bit of who I am and who you are matters.

* * *

Life forces bravery on us all at different times. Something catastrophic happens, and any way of continuing in the after is a brave path.

Maybe its a diagnosis. A breakup. An epically or ordinarily bad day. A death, maybe of a person, maybe of a dream, maybe of the life you always imagined but would never get to live. A kid waking up in the middle of the night covered in vomit, and you have to be the grown-up. A moment in which you feel like youre chickening out because youre saying no to something and youve forgotten that no can be the bravest word when a yes is expected. A natural disaster leaving you with pieces from before to bring into this after existence. A global pandemic in which the best after scenario will still be cataclysmically different from any before.

Maybe its actually something amazing and good and saturated with joy, but the newness of it all means that moving forward is terrifying, which means that each step must be brave. Moving somewhere new. Coming out. A child entering your life. A child moving away for their next stage in life. Something you created going viral. Someone who loves you growing closer. A windfall. A new job. Leaving a job you hate.

The world is made of stories, and yours is part of that. Your brave is being real in a world that shouts, Be yourself, followed by, No, not like that! Your brave will bring mistakes because brave spaces arent meant to be safe spaces or comfort zones or perfection prisons. Embracing the brave that is yours will mean you might let others down, but youll learn thats better than letting yourself down over and over.

To be clear, bravery is never meant to be an excuse to be a dick. Some people will use it that way, but thats not really brave, yall. Thats a jackass in a unicorn costume, one that looks something like bravery but is just hiding whats underneath. The costume doesnt change the core, and eventually the jackass makes itself known.

Reader, you are not the jackass.

Most of us have been told who we are is bad or wrong or less than others, maybe by parents, maybe by faith communities, maybe by rarely or never seeing someone who looks like you as a main character or on a magazine cover or in the White House or in the classroom. Living brave requires us to know ourselves and give ourselves permission to be that person, not the version others have handed to us like a unicorn costume. Unicorns are awesomedont get me wrongbut you being you is more majestic.

Im a Christian, and I frame living brave for myself through the lens of my faith as becoming all of who God made me to be. I know that might sound triggering to those of you who have experienced religious trauma. For me, though, it works because Im clear in my mind that Gods self-proclaimed representatives are not God.

When were brave, well make some people unhappy. But we arent meant to become all of the person [fill in the blank here] thinks we should be. You have permission to deviate from that path, but thats not an offering from me. Its already yours; it was given by your Creator and cannot be repossessed by anyone else.

You are you. I am me. And thats how its supposed to be.

As an example, I know you might be mildly annoyed by the title of this book because, yes, it is grammatically incorrect. Per the rules of the English language, living bravely is whats proper. Ill explain the reason for the title, even though Ive learned that being brave can be as simple as deciding other people arent owed an explanation for every decision. It can be brave to answer, Im me, and this was my choice, without anything more detailed than that.

When my (now dead) husband, Lee, was in elementary school, he always thought he was in trouble. Walk quietly, the teacher would stage-whisper to the class. Come along quickly, if they were too slow. Listen carefully, if they werent. None of those exhortations were uncommon in school settings, but Lee heard them differently than the rest of us did. He heard, Walk quiet, Lee, and Come along quick, Lee, and Listen careful, Lee! Every phrase sounded like he was being singled out from everyone else.

So many of my present-day brave stories come back to Lee. I was living bravely before I met him, of course. He didnt make me brave.

But now? Im living bravely without Lee, which is another level of impossible.