Lessons from a Not-So-Cowardly Lion
Ellen Notbohm
Autism Asperger’s Digest | July/August 2013
“What makes the elephant charge his tusk, in the misty mist and the dusky dusk?” the Cowardly Lion asks through narrowed eyes. “What makes the muskrat guard his musk?”
We all know the answer.
Courage.
As a child, the annual broadcast of The Wizard of Oz was a near-religious event for me, and Lion one of my most beloved movie characters. Though decades passed before I realized it, he shaped how I came to define courage within myself and later in my children.
Long before my sons’ challenges with ADHD and autism compelled me to charge my tusk or guard my musk, I knew myself to be a cautious, unadventurous, worrywart middle-of-the-roader. Taking adventurous chances always seemed to reap nasty rather than lofty consequences. It didn’t make me feel courageous; it made me feel stupid. I sailed past my 30th birthday accepting that I would never be known as a valiant person.
Then I had my kids. I had to learn much, and very quickly, and contrary to the cliché, it was brain science. I learned to predict, to prevent, to educate, to ameliorate, to intervene, to advocate, and I did it all because those two little someones stirred me to love more deeply than I could ever have imagined. One of their teachers urged me to write books about my parenting attitude and experiences. And some of the people who read my books saw me quite differently than I saw myself. A mom at an autism conference raised her hand and said, “Your courage is simply inspiring. But I just don’t have that. How did you find your courage? To do all you’ve had to do for your children?”
Fear, I told her bluntly. My children stirred me not only to love more deeply and to hope more fervently than I ever had, but also to fear more penetratingly. I found my courage through that raw fear. Or perhaps I didn’t find it; perhaps it found me. I can’t say it better than I did in Ten Things Every Child with Autism Wishes You Knew:
I could not bear to imagine Bryce’s fate as an adult if I did not do everything within my power to equip him to live in a world where I would not always be around. I could not rid my head of words like “prison” and “homeless.” His quality of life was at stake, and failure was not an option. These thoughts propelled me out of bed every morning and drove me to take the actions I did.
I recalled a long ago sermon by a clergyperson who described three kinds of courage. The first he called courage that doesn’t know any better. This courage is born of naivety, inexperience, lack of knowledge, a courage that comes from being unaware of the risks and consequences of our actions.
The second kind of courage he called courage that has hit rock bottom. We summon this kind of courage when we have no choice other than surrender and defeat. He told the story of a 19th century man who had invested years writing a book. When he finished the book, he asked his best friend if he would read it and comment. The author entrusted to his friend his one and only copy of the book. The friend left the manuscript on a hall table, where a maid came along and threw it out. The author, upon learning this, sat down and started writing his book all over again.
The third kind of courage he described as courage that has said its prayers. We summon this brand of courage when we acknowledge our fear, we know the risks, and we take action anyway because the consequences of taking no action or lesser action are unacceptable.
Lion embodies courage that has said its prayers. He knew the risks. When the Wizard charges Dorothy’s little party to kill the Wicked Witch, the Lion asks, “What if she kills us first?” When the Witch captures Dorothy, his desire to rescue her overcomes his dread fear and channels it into courage.
And when the time comes for Dorothy to leave Oz, she tells Lion she’ll miss how he “used to holler for help before you found your courage.” Dorothy was very young, so we’ll forgive that she missed the fact that hollering for help is a hallmark of courage. Lion may never have found his courage at all without the support of the brains and hearts of the people around him. They stayed elbow-close to him, believed in him, wouldn’t let him turn back, even needed him to lead at one point. In time he became their equal. In the end, the Scarecrow, Tin Man, Lion and Dorothy became a formidable team and accomplished their goal. That goal is not so different than ours—they were trying to help a child move from a dangerous, threatening environment to a safe, healthy one. Our foes may not be witches or flying monkeys, but the challenges of autism can make the world an exquisitely intolerable psychological and physical environment for our children.
Lion was actually more courageous than he knew. Right from the start, he acknowledged his problem and reached out for help, from strangers yet! Like Lion, I hollered for help all along the way. People with brains and heart answered me. Teachers and therapists and friends, oh my! The mom at the autism conference, who claimed she hadn’t the courage, certainly had the seeds of it in her. When she addressed me, her voice quavered through the first sentence. By the time she got to “How did you find your courage?” her voice was strong. She asked a tough question in front of a hundred people, and the act of doing so was part of her answer.
“I never would have found it if it hadn’t been for you” are the last words Lion says to Dorothy. I may never have found my courage if it hadn’t been for my children. I might have gone on thinking of courage as something defined by acts of daring, death-defying, historic heroism, something I could never hope to achieve. How did you find your courage? I found it by putting my feet on the floor each morning and simply doing what needed to be done. I didn’t think of it as courage, so I didn’t know I’d found it until the day I came across a framed piece of calligraphy in a beach-town gift shop that read “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow’” (Mary Anne Radmacher). I found my courage because I wanted my children to find theirs.
So I would add a fourth brand of courage to that list I heard so long ago. I would call it courage that grows from quiet tenacity. I watched Bryce grow into just such a courageous young man. Despite the sludge of medical, social, sensory and communication difficulties his autism dishes out, he gets up every day determined to try again. He graduated as valedictorian of his class, and I can’t emphasize enough that his achievement came from 90% courage and heart and 10% brains.
I still do not think of myself as a courageous person. However, I had to smile over a sweetly serendipitous email that arrived the very day after I began writing this treatise on courage. “Thank you,” it read, “for being a fearless crusader for quality of life and better understanding of people with learning differences.”
BIO
Ellen Notbohm is the author of one of the autism community’s most beloved books, Ten Things Every Child with Autism Wishes You Knew, and three other award-winning books on autism. Visit her at www.ellennotbohm.com and find her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ellennotbohm. Please contact the author for permission to use in any way, including posting on the Internet.
Copyright © Autism Asperger’s Digest. 2013. All Rights Reserved. Any distribution, print or electronic, prohibited without permission of author.
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