Читать книгу Girl Be Brave - Cheryl Hale - Страница 5

Introduction

GIRL BE BRAVE.

I find these words powerful, and not just because my grandmother wrote them to my mother. They are special because I’ve never heard truer words in my life.

My grandmother, Frances, had a difficult life. She grew up in the rural South during the Great Depression. Her mother died when she was a toddler. Her father, unable to raise her alone, sent her to live with her grandmother. Frances dropped out of school at a young age and married young, just like so many women in her generation.

She adored her husband, Ed, and for a while, their life was going well. They had five children, four rowdy boys and my mom, the tagalong.

Ed left Frances in the 1950s. This was a time when women had few rights and no social structure existed to support single mothers. The older children, now grown, moved out to begin lives of their own. This left Frances and my mother to do their best to meet their basic needs. They struggled.

I was very close to Frances growing up, and my memories of her are vivid. I remember, when I was about eight years old, I was laying at the foot of her bed while she rocked in her chair in front of an open window. There was a gentle breeze and the faint sound of the gospel song “I’ll Fly Away” playing in the background. Frances was reading her Bible with a magnifying glass. The image of her sitting there is burned into my memory. She was a woman of faith and perseverance. I’d like to think I have a little bit of her in me. Looking back at her old black-and-white photos, I can see the woman of defiant determination and courage that left such a huge mark on my life.

Fast forward to 2016. My mother was battling breast cancer. During the holidays, we had a family gathering, and I had the idea that we should read Frances’ Bible.

In the back pages of my grandmother’s Bible was a handwritten letter to her estranged husband and their children. In her southern, broken English, she pleaded with them to settle down and live decent lives. She wanted them to be the best version of themselves. The very last line of the heart-wrenching letter was to my mom, “girl be brave.”

It struck me like lightning, and I knew in that moment what I had to do. Other people needed to hear these exact words. I wanted to shout them from the mountaintops, and I still do. That’s why I founded the Girl Be Brave movement. I wanted Frances’ words to vibrate through generations. We are able to maximize her impact by donating a portion of the proceeds of Girl Be Brave items to charity. It’s a part of my vision to establish a Frances Hamilton scholarship fund for girls who don’t have financial means.

Frances wrote that message to my mother because she knew my mother would need to be brave, and she was. My mother fought the fight of breast cancer and won. That’s brave.

Life isn’t easy; we all go through times of darkness and uncertainty. In those challenging periods, we all need to remind ourselves to be brave and to keep living, keep moving, until we find the light. We must overcome. We must be brave.

I’ve included some black-and-white photos of everyday women of today and long ago-women who, like Frances, radiate determination, courage, faith, and perseverance. May the words and photos inspire you to believe that you are brave. My grandmother would like that and so would I.