Choosing Gentleness in a Harsh World
Smiling in the Storm
The night before I received the call that changed everything, a late-summer storm swept across the valley. I stepped into the backyard and filmed it almost without thinking. This was somewhat of an abnormality and wanted to capture it…..
I didn’t know it then, but that short clip would become a marker in my memory.
The last ordinary evening before my world tilted.
The next day, I received word that my mom had decided to stop fighting against the cruel illness of ALS. She wanted, while she still could, to make the final choice herself.
Ten short days later, she peacefully transitioned to Spirit.
Carrying What I Couldn’t Name
In those first hours and days, I went into a kind of quiet autopilot. I made calls, handled logistics, kept up the routines that life still demanded. Underneath, I packed away the shock and fear like a survival instinct.
It felt safer to hold everything tight and out of view than to let the weight of it rush in. I can see now how deeply I stored those feelings as grief rarely disappears, it just waits.
The Strength She Lived
My mom’s life had given her more than enough reason to harden, yet she never met the world that way. Even when her body betrayed her, she found a way to smile. She listened when others were hurting, even as her own heart was breaking. She kept looking for small proofs of goodness in a world that often gave her the opposite.
She showed me that gentleness is not the absence of strength. It is strength. It’s a deliberate choice to stay open when closing off would be easier.
Choosing How to Show Up
That choice is what stays with me. We don’t always get to decide what comes our way. Illness, loss, sudden change as none of that waits for permission.
But we do decide how we meet it. We can let it turn us bitter, or we can hold on to something steady inside ourselves and still meet others with decency and care.
My mom chose decency and care over and over.
I come back to that video of the storm often. The sky that night mirrors the final stretch of our lives - turbulent and unpredictable, but threaded with its own rough beauty. It reminds me that endings can carry their own kind of clarity.
Her final lesson wasn’t wrapped in big words or dramatic gestures. It was in the quiet way she lived: persistent, gentle, unwilling to let hardship decide the shape of her Spirit. That is the part of her I carry forward……an inheritance of steadiness, something to reach for when the next storm gathers.
A Gentle Prompt for You
Think of someone whose quiet strength has stayed with you. Perhaps someone who met difficulty without letting it harden them. What did their choices teach you about how to show up when life feels chaotic and ungrounded?
Take a few minutes to write it down or simply sit with the memory. Sometimes those recollections become the very compass points we need when our own storms roll in.
-xoxo,
Heather