If courage is the knowledge of what is not to be feared, there is nothing like becoming a mother to help us prioritize and recognize how trivial many of our fears are compared to what really matters.
Janet Grillo, a writer-producer living in Los Angeles whose son has autism, told me: "The biggest fear a mother has is that her child will become damaged. That the perfect wonder of her baby will be undone somehow. That she will turn her head just at the moment he slips. That the spill of scalding coffee, the outturned handle of a pot, the stray pill, will find her child. I don't know if the vaccines I insisted upon, as a responsible parent following responsible medical advice, caused him harm. Or if the antibiotics prescribed to fight off strep did him in. Or if the toxins in the air and water that pervade everything we eat and breathe crescendoed, after generations, to a breaking point. Or if it was none of this, but maybe my son's genetic destiny, a ticking clock that would strike when he turned two no matter what I did or did not do. Or perhaps my fear itself called it forth, as some sort of extraordinary response from an unkind God.
"What I do know is that when my alert, engaged, charming, and vivacious son turned two, he began, hour by hour, day by day, to drift away. As if by helium, he lifted away from us, from our family, from our world, and inward toward a remote and private place."
It was the hardest and most frightening thing Janet and her husband, film director David O. Russell, had ever faced. But, Janet told me, "Ultimately, faith and fear could not coexist. One had to eventually prevail out of this eternal pull. I simply did not have the luxury to feel fear. Fear had become, in the face of my child's immediate need, an indulgence. He was here and autism was engulfing him, and I could either reach beyond myself and into the fog that gripped him and pull him out or I could continue fearing that I would lose him. Fear had to fall by the wayside. And faith is what emerged in the tiny triumphs of his returned gaze."
Children clearly help us tap into this faith, the source of the life force that vaporizes fears. They help us see the world in a more trusting way and discover a love we did not know was possible.
Copyright © 2007 Arianna Huffington
Author
Arianna Huffington has written eleven widely praised books, appeared on numerous television and radio shows, and founded the Huffington Post, an enormously successful online source of news and opinion. In 2006 she was chosen as one of Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People in the World." She wrote this book for her two daughters, in the hope that they will lead fearless lives.
This is an excerpt reprinted with permission from the book On Becoming Fearless by Arianna Huffington
Published by Little, Brown and Company; April 2007
Copyright © 2007 Arianna Huffington
