What Does It Mean to Have Grit In an Ongoing Emergency?
Think back over your life to a time you found the courage to act.
I’ve been thinking a lot about grit, what it takes to stick to something when the obstacles seem insurmountable and times are hard. Author and psychologist Angela Duckworth defines grit this way:
“Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint.”
- Angela Duckworth
I discovered my own grit when I was 27 years old and in love for the first time—head over heels with the woman I was certain I’d spend the rest of my life with. But because it was the first time in my adult life that I was experiencing sex and intimacy in the same relationship, I shut down sexually. I didn’t know why; it just happened. When things got heated, I’d go numb and dissociate.
My lover grew enraged at my withdrawal and her rage triggered my first incest memory of my grandfather abusing me.
The breaking through of that first memory led to a psychic, emotional collapse so profound I was certain I would never get over it. That I’d never survive the bombardment of flashbacks and body memories, the rejection of my mother who chose her dead father over her living daughter, the estrangement from my family of origin who insisted I was making up lies—and who were demanding “proof.” I was cast out of the family I had idealized, lost in a sea of pain.
Six months later, I organized a party where I invited a dozen friends over, and in exchange for a home-cooked meal, I asked them to help me figure out what I should do with my life. I did a 15-minute presentation, complete with flip charts, about my skills and talents, work environments I hated (anything remotely corporate or rule-bound), clothing I refused to wear (suits, dresses and nylons) as well as the things I loved to do: writing, interviewing people, being on the radio. Before I fed my friends, I had them fill out a 3-page questionnaire about how I might best use my talents and harness my drive into a new way of earning a living.
I definitely didn’t know what to do with my life, but I sure had a lot of chutzpah.
My friend and former writing teacher, Ellen Bass, was at that party. The year before, she and a small women’s collective had published the anthology, I Never Told Anyone: Stories of Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse, which had cracked open a silence that was just starting to break. The book was doing well in trade paperback, and at my “career party,” Ellen told me that her publisher, Harper & Row, wanted her to write a sequel, a second book on incest—this one about healing.
“I told them I didn’t want to do it,” Ellen continued. “I have too much on my plate.”
“How about if I write it with you?” I replied. “What if you didn’t have to do it alone?”
Ellen gave me a long look. “Laura, if I was going to do it with anyone. I’d do it with you, I know you have the writing chops.” Then she laughed. “And you obviously have the drive, but I don’t want to do it.”
“I told them I didn’t want to do it,” Ellen continued. “I have too much on my plate.”
“How about if I write it with you?” I replied. “What if you didn’t have to do it alone?”
But that conversation planted the seed, and for the next couple of months, I worked on Ellen. “How about if I do all the interviews with the women and you don’t have to do anything for the first year?” “How about if I do all the parts you don’t want to do?”
As is my nature, I was relentless.
A few weeks later, a Hallmark card arrived in my San Francisco mailbox, Ellen’s name on the return address. I ripped open the envelope and pulled out the card. The front was embossed with pastel balloons.
And inside was a single word, in cursive, in Ellen’s hand: yes.
I still have that card.
And that’s how The Courage to Heal was born.
Throughout the three-and-a-half years it took us to write the book, I was wracked with memories, devastated by grief, dissociated half the time, at war with my mother who was outraged that I was not only spouting lies, but now I was writing this “hate book.”
Being ostracized from family gatherings and made invisible was gutting. But I never gave up.
I kept sitting in the living rooms of incest survivor after incest survivor, cups of tea gone cold, asking them questions, watching the little wheels of my cassette tape recorder turning round and round. “How did you cope?” I’d ask them. “How did your mother react?” “Have you been able to have sex?” “When did you stop believing it was your fault?”
Being ostracized from family gatherings and made invisible was gutting. But I never gave up.
I asked every question pressing my own heart.
And at night, in my rented room in a flat near the corner of Haight and Masonic, I transcribed those interviews on my Mac 128 for hours, well into the middle of the night, long after I’d finished working the three part-time jobs that paid my rent. I edited those stories, sent them to Ellen for comments and then sat down and edited them again. She and I met every couple of months for a few days at a time to brainstorm, write, read, edit.
Every time I had a new memory or got another hateful call from my mother, I’d be shredded. It took me weeks to recover, but I never stopped working on the book. I was a workhorse, and the book was my salvation.
It’s hard for me now to go back there in my mind’s eye. Forty years ago, I was 28, the age my youngest daughter is now. I felt broken and devastated, yet a fierce determination rose up through my core. Nothing was going to stop me. Nothing was going to stop us.
I had grit.
Throughout those years of incessant labor, I was sure The Courage to Heal would never be published. Ellen and I had an agent, an editor, and a book contract—yes—but I was certain our book was too radical. Too extreme.
We were taking on the patriarchy. We were taking on the subjugation of women. We were empowering women to rise. We were even out as lesbians. There was no way Harper & Row was going along with this. Once they saw the final manuscript, they were going to pull the plug.
I was certain our book was too radical. Too extreme. We were taking on the patriarchy. We were taking on the subjugation of women. We were empowering women to rise. We were even out as lesbians. There was no way Harper & Row was going to go along with this.
But they didn’t pull the plug. And after the first edition made its way out into the world, the book caught fire. In those days before the internet, it was passed woman to woman, hand to hand.
As I often said to people in those years, “I gained the world, but I lost my family.”
Despite the devastation in my personal life, my mission never wavered. I stood on stages in front of roomfuls of women who’d come on planes and buses, crossed state lines. They stood there with tattered copies of The Courage to Heal and waited in line for hours for me to sign them.
I’ve thought a lot lately about that shattered, heartbroken, grieving, anguished young woman. How she didn’t give up. How she fought for the underdog. How she used her voice to inspire, to expose, to tell the truth, to challenge power.
She is waking up inside me. Her voice is needed now. All our voices are needed now. This is the zero hour.
Now it’s your turn. Pull out your notebooks. Write for fifteen minutes.
PROMPT: Describe a time in your life when you demonstrated true grit. It doesn’t have be dramatic or public like my story. It might have been a moment when quiet strength rose up inside you, something no one else even knew about, a time you persisted and took determined action despite the obstacles you faced. Tell us about a time you demonstrated true grit.
As always, I invite you to describe this time in your life or share excerpts from your writing.
And remember, every time you click the heart, leave a comment or share a post, you’re making it easier for new readers to discover The Writer’s Journey.
Write With Laura
The work of my heart is to teach.
These are the writing workshops and retreats I’ve got coming up in 2025:
In person:
Flourishing as We Age: A Writing Retreat for Women at a beautiful oceanfront retreat center in Santa Cruz, California. Using story, deep listening, and ritual, learn to welcome change, build resilience and hold grief and gratitude simultaneously. May 2025. Just three spots left.
The Healing Heart of Bali: A Writer's Journey of Renewal for Body, Mind and Spirit. Learn about Balinese spirituality and healing and explore the back roads of Bali in three beautiful locations. August 10-25, 2025. Just 3 spots left.
And online:
How to Write About What You Can’t Remember. Learn to transform scraps of memory into a rich written legacy. This in-depth master class will be taught weekly for five weeks on Zoom. It will be recorded for those who can’t attend live.
Weekly Writing Practice Class: This Wednesday class has met weekly for 25 years. We meet on Zoom, write to prompts and share intimately in a sacred circle. Openings now.
How To Get the Most Out of Writing Prompts:
If you’re new to my Substack, here’s my advice for how to mine the deepest material in your writing:
Laura, thank you for sharing your time of having grit. Thank you for what you have brought into the world with “The Courage to Heal” and for what you are bringing into the world at this time, with your work, with this space in Substack.
Here is my response to the prompt:
I was 22, and had just started my third year of medical school. One morning, I got a phone call, asking whether I’d be able to take on a night shift, to sit with a terminally ill patient at his home. The person calling me knew me, and she was aware that I had been with my mother when she was dying. She had no idea that I knew the patient well. Serendipity?
I had just been asked to sit with my mentor, my teacher - the person who referred to himself as my “doctor father”. An endearing term that spoke about his wish to teach me medicine in the ways that he practised - wholehearted, holding body, mind, soul and spirit.
His name was Gerd. He was in his late seventies, still practising. I had been his intern during the summer before.
That evening, I arrived at his house, was greeted by his family. They were exhausted from sitting with him through many nights.
During my first hours with him, it became obvious that he was in a lot of pain. He could not speak anymore, but his reactions were clear.
There was no pain medication available. Here I was, in the house of a medical doctor, and there was no way to relieve his pain in his last days of life. I knew that the doctor who was treating him thought that pain medication should not be used because it took away the potential of a conscious dying process.
Gerd was clearly suffering, he was in agony.
What did I do? I called his doctor, said that I definitely needed morphine so that he could be free from pain. Prescribing morphine required paperwork (highly restricted medication with a lot of legal hurdles). I knew that she would not be happy with my request… A young student, requesting medication that was outside of the “usual” - and that was “against” her own belief system.
I remember that phone call so clearly. I told her which papers to fill in. I must have been very firm that I would not take no for an answer.
Advocating for my friend felt like stomping my foot on the ground: this was a request that could not be denied.
I would not be left alone again. I had been left alone by another doctor, during the last night with my mother. I would not allow that to happen again.
A raging 22-year-old to be reckoned with.
He made it through that night. I went home in the morning to get a bit of sleep and went back in the late afternoon.
And: I found the morphine on the table - ready to be injected if needed. As if that was the most ordinary in the world…
I sat next to him. Talked to him. When I noticed that he was experiencing a surge of pain, I prepared everything to give him the first morphine injection. I knew that this was the right thing to do. I knew that he would not have wanted to suffer.
I sat with him, and felt how he was slowly leaving his body. I was so grateful to be with him during these hours. Quiet. Close. In peace.
Around 2 am, he took his last breath. I woke up his wife and his children. We sat on the floor, in a circle, next to the bed where his body was, and we shared stories. Stories about him, about his life, serious stories and funny stories.
Those hours belong to the most beautiful hours of my life.
I remember when I first bought your book, many years ago. Thank you for your hard work.
I’m a fellow incest survivor and have been trying to write my way through it for almost 30 years now.
Recently, I got a middle-aged plot twist.
I was contacted by an investigator on behalf of a childhood classmate who filed suit against our elementary school teacher under the NY State Child Victims Act.
This has triggered what I call “Round 2” for me. My whole autobiography has been upended AGAIN.
I feel as if my entire story has taken on another dimension. Like I’m trying to solve a multidimensional puzzle.