I can't imagine what it must feel like to be afraid for my life. I understand this is a privilege not all people get to take for granted. It's not that I've never been in a dangerous situation through bad luck or poor choices, but injury or imprisonment doesn't cross my mind as I plan the day's activities. I may be naive in this thinking, but I've been lucky so far.
We often think of courage as something someone has when they perform a heroic act. When we see videos of someone putting their own life on the line to save someone else's, we wonder if we would have the fortitude to try something so risky.
Courage is a choice. Courage is being ready and willing to face adverse situations involving danger or pain. It's the mental or moral strength to face peril, fear, or difficulty and make the choice to confront agony, pain, danger, uncertainty, or intimidation because it is what must be done.
Courage isn't fearless. There are often very valid reasons to be afraid, and it's important to understand the risks. But bravery doesn't mean you aren't afraid. It means you are willing to face the challenges ahead of you despite the fear.
Courage isn't always a heroic act. Life takes courage - every day. Sometimes, it takes bravery just to get out of bed in the morning, whether we're rising to slay dragons or pet kittens. We all have times in our lives when facing tomorrow takes guts. Â
Perseverance takes courage. Courage is not letting your hardships stop you or your setbacks define you. It challenges your stories about what is possible, rewriting what stifles your happiness and limits your success.
Courage connects fear with confidence. Courage takes belief in yourself, refusing to submit to insecurities and the doubts of those around you, forging your own path, and owning your power to make a difference that no one else can.
Speaking up takes courage. Saying anything feels vulnerable. It takes extra chutzpah to speak to power and stand up for your beliefs, risking ridicule and rejection because something more important is at stake.
Courage is saying "enough." Say enough to the fears that urge you to play safe, love, and live safe, knowing that becoming vulnerable to your fears lies at the heart of everything worthwhile.
That is exactly what inspires me about the courageous women I’m writing about in this installment of my Inspirational Women series. They embody all the characteristics of courage and take risks to make changes, even when doing so seems hopeless. They are Rosa Parks and Claudia Amaro.
Rosa Parks
I can't imagine the courage it would take to leave your house in the morning, knowing that you'll see the inside of a jail cell before the familiar sight of home again. That's what Rosa Parks faced as she headed to work on December 1, 1955. We've been led to believe Ms. Parks's actions that day were because she was tired. She was more than tired. She'd had enough. Â
The story I've always heard is that after a long day of work as a seamstress, Ms. Parks got on the bus to go home and sat in the first row of the "colored" seating. As the bus filled and white passengers stood, the bus driver told the black passengers to give up their seats. Rosa was tired and said she didn't believe she should have to stand up, and the bus driver had her arrested. That small stand started the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which ended with a Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public transit was unconstitutional.Â
The real truth is that Ms. Park's defiance was planned. At the time of her action, she led the youth division at the Montgomery branch of NAACP. In a meeting four days before she stepped on that bus, she learned that the murderers of 14-year-old lynching victim Emmett Till had been acquitted. She credits the anger over the failure to bring his killers to justice as what inspired her to make the heroic stand that nicknamed her "the mother of the freedom movement."
In her autobiography Rosa Parks: My Story (1992), Parks says her defiance was intentional: "I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was 42. No, the only tired I was was tired of giving in."
Knowing her actions weren't accidental makes me admire her even more. She knew there would be repercussions to taking a stand and must have weighed the risks. Despite knowing what it would cost, she made the courageously confident choice to speak up and say enough is enough, spurring a national movement that created change.
She did pay a price for her actions. Ms. Parks was arrested and found guilty of disorderly conduct. She lost her job as a seamstress at a local department store, and her husband Raymond lost his job as a barber at a local Air Force base. Unable to find work in Montgomery, Ms. Parks and her husband left town in 1957.
Thankfully, Ms. Parks didn't stop speaking her voice and remained active in the civil rights movement in the 1960s. She received many honors, including the NAACP's Springarn Medal in 1979, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996, and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999. After Ms. Parks died in Detroit in 2005 at 92, she became the first woman to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C.
Claudia Amaro
I can't imagine the courage it would take and how unsettling it would feel to know that, at any time, you could be uprooted and deported to another country, separated from your life and everything and everyone you know. Starting over without any resources in a place where you don't have any connections is the stuff nightmares are made of.
That is the reality every day for people without documentation who come to the U.S. as children. For those lucky enough to have filed for a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status between 2012 and 2021, there are some protections in place if they jump through paperwork hoops and continually renew their status. Without this DACA status, children of immigrants can't get a driver's license, be legally employed, or vote.
My friend Claudia Armano has lived with this reality every day since she was 12. That's when her mother left behind everything she knew and moved Claudia and her four sisters from Mexico to the U.S. two years after her father was murdered. When she was 19, Claudia moved to Wichita with her family and still considers this her home.
After 9/11/2001, many new laws were passed regulating undocumented immigrants. Claudi and her husband met with immigration attorneys during this time, looking for ways to legalize their status in the U.S. before DACA, without any luck. The laws had changed in Kansas, and they could no longer get a driver's license, so when Claudia's husband was pulled over for a traffic stop, he was turned into immigration.
With a five-year-old son at home, Claudia bravely went to help her husband and was arrested too. They fought their cases for almost a year "until we had nothing left but our dignity," says Claudia. After that time, her husband was deported, and Claudia followed him to Mexico with their son.
But life for deported Dreamers could be dangerous, and without any support from the unprepared government of Mexico, life was challenging. Tired of the oppression of being undocumented, Claudia joined the "Bring Them Home" civil disobedience at the border in the summer of 2013 with nine others who were brought to the U.S. as children and had been deported.
For 17 days, she was detained at an immigration detention center in Arizona while activists in the community, along with priests, journalists, attorneys, and other supporters, presented themselves at the border, asking President Obama to let them back into the country.
When Claudia returned to Wichita, she noticed a gap in news, information, and resources for Spanish speakers and pursued her childhood dream of becoming a journalist. This started with a weekly radio show, Planeta Venus, which she turned into an online radio station at PlanetaVenus.online that has local and national news in Spanish and English. This year, she started a weekly Spanish newsletter sent every Friday by text and on Facebook, as well as a digital and print newspaper in Spanish. She is part of the Wichita Journalism Collaborative.
Claudia started AB&C Bilingual Resources in 2017 to close the communication gap in our community and ensure Latinos are included in conversations and the local economy. I always refer business leaders to Claudia to translate contracts into Spanish so their customers who don't speak English can understand what they're signing.
Claudia plays a significant role in communicating and engaging with the Latino community. She has chosen to persevere despite the setbacks and hardships and take a stand, even when it puts her in danger. Â Her courage to speak up gives voice to herself and others, which is a courageously bold move.
Both of these tenacious women were brave enough to do something at a time when few people would. They dared to let the world know that they would no longer tolerate injustice for themselves and others and took action to make change, which is heroic. Â Â Their work continues to be an inspiration to me and many others.
These women remind me that one person really can start a movement and that actions that may seem small can lead to big changes. It just takes someone brave enough to stand up and say enough is enough.
Next week: Inspirational Women with Passion
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