Your courage is BIGGER than your fear.
These are the words I told Ava, while tears rolled down her face and her hiccups escaped her lips, bouncing her body like when you hit unexpected pot holes in the rain. Lili, in the other room with Mark, was trying to figuratively climb into his skin, wanting – needing – to cuddle with him, melding her body to his to feel his heartbeat.
This journey has hit my babies, hard. They each express their fear so differently, it’s like watching two different movies about the same subject.
Your courage is BIGGER than your fear.
I went to bed that night, after calming fears and validating feelings and lots of hugs and kisses, tears escaping my eyes unannounced and unaware. Sleep was elusive, expectedly. It made me angry and sad…that hot and searing anger and the kind of sadness that comes from the depths of your being.
I thought, how can we make our new mantra tangible?
I woke the girls up at 6:30 in the morning (Ava had a full day of dance ahead of her, starting with an 8a class) and asked them to help me show that my courage was bigger than my fear. And as they looked on, I shaved my head.
It was the most incredibly liberating thing I have ever done. I needed to show them that, even in the face of adversity and shit, you still have the ability to overcome it.
Ava went on that day to dance her heart out on stage, applying our newly learned lesson later that night by pulling her loose tooth out on her own. Lili behaved way better than expected when faced with hours of sitting and danced in the aisles when the music moved her.
I’m sure there will be many more moments of bringing our new mantra to life. Because fear will tell you “I can’t”, but our courage will say, “Watch me”.
Love and Light, Always 
grace and fbombs 