Grace Under Pressure: And the Boulder Gets Up the Hill

The first time I heard Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising, it felt like an anthem for people who get outta bed every day to face challenges they never expected. Listening to it again tonight as I drove home, the song struck a deeper chord.  And it got me thinking about some things I’ve seen and been through.  And I know that others out there will feel better and stronger by reading this and maybe giving it a listen too.  The Rising isn’t just about surviving; it’s about how each step, even though the most challenging moments, reveals our shared humanity and the strength we find when we carry our own water – and, in some cases, the water of others, too.

I became a Special Education Teacher in Buffalo during the Clintonian Era. When Mr. Galluzzo handed me my first set of keys to my classroom, I recall taking them and running up the stairs to the second floor to check it out.  Like any young person moving from restaurant jobs and low-paying direct care group home positions, there is a lot of excitement.  And, more often than not, those I let know that I was making the official move into career adulthood always talked about the teaching schedule—the vacation days, the weekends, snow days, and, of course…summer vacations.  Things were going to be so, so rosy.

Then, pretty quickly, I started to see things from different angles. With each passing year, while learning about my students, I also learned about myself.  Like most young teachers, I sought to impress my Principal with my ability to move the needle and get results.  With elaborate projects, nightly homework assignments, and a high-energy teaching style, I figured it’d be pretty straightforward.  There were just a few hitches.  Like the fact that my high school students rarely, if ever, did homework, a few still couldn’t read, and their passion for learning wasn’t as ignited by my love for teaching as I thought they’d be.

At the end of one class, I asked one of my 10th graders to stick around to talk to me.  I sat him down and gave him this monologue about how important it was to do his homework.  He stared at me blankly, and when I finished bitching at him, he apologized for not doing his homework the night before.  He then told me that he’d been up all night talking his father out of committing suicide.  Have you ever had a computer that goes blue screen unexpectedly?  Yeah, that was my brain.  Later that day, I verified his story with our school’s resource officer.  It was true.  The father was taken to the hospital by ambulance that morning – and his son…well, he then came to school.  I felt really stupid, to say the least. 

You just never know what you are going to hear

The angles started changing, as it was a different vantage point. Every time I thought I’d seen it all, there was more. As the circumstances changed, I learned about parental and family conditions, why and how things happen in juvenile and family courts, and about streets that were different and even more stressed than in my hometown.  And I even got to have my own experiences with divorce, a custody battle, and worrying about my son – just the way my family worried about me.  And just like the parents and caregivers of the kids in my classrooms worried about them. 

I think what happens with people is that once they experience something challenging, they can understand another person’s struggles just a little bit better. After my last post about getting custody of my son, I received messages from readers congratulating me or recognizing the resilience and persistence it took, which felt really great. I am so grateful for the positivity.  Then, just today, I listened to another story – someone else fighting the fight; and now I can’t get the Springsteen song out of my head. 

There’s a kind of strength that reveals itself quietly, without fanfare, in our everyday choices to keep going. It’s in how a woman decides, against all odds, to start over in a new country, far from the familiar, with nothing but determination and hope as her guide. It’s in the sacrifices made to create a better future – not just for her but for her daughter. That strength, though often unseen by the world, is the kind that builds lives, one brave step at a time.

I think about the resilience it takes to weather life’s storms, the ones that come unexpectedly and threaten to pull us under. It’s not just about survival; it’s about refusing to let those storms define us. It’s about finding ways to protect what matters most, even when the world feels like it’s crumbling. There’s grace in that kind of fight, in the way someone can carry so much on their shoulders and still manage to move forward with love in their heart and purpose in their step.

Bruce wrote The Rising in response to the attacks on the United States on 9/11.  That was a time when everyone around here needed to be lifted.  Like Mr. Springsteen, let’s not forget our power to breathe life into others. 

Previous
Previous

Welcome to the Age of Luigi

Next
Next

Thought Driver: For the Dads