Who is Ann the Brave?

Let me tell you a story.

Lucy graduates from high school tomorrow, which means it’s time once again to embrace my identity as Ann the Brave. Let me tell you the story of this mythical character.

Here I am on my 31st birthday, seven months pregnant with Lucy.

When Jon and I were expecting Lucy back in 2006, we took a birthing class together. I had done a fair amount of birth education research and found a class that incorporated art and inner work as part of the education process. (It’s connected to the book Birthing From Within by Pam England, and I’m still a fan.)

A ultrasound of Lucy — maybe five months pregnant? She was already so cute!

One of the culminating events of this class came when each partner presented the other with an expressive, artistic gift to represent the journey into parenthood. I have only a hazy memory of what I gave Jon, but I do remember what he gave me: a gorgeous, chunky heart sculpted out of clay. Jon then went on to tell me that he was commissioning a pendant in that shape to acknowledge my bravery in becoming a mother. My journal records my joyful tears…

If you can’t decipher my messy handwriting, you’re not alone. It says: “…surprise project — Dora is making me a heart pendant to represent my bravery, commissioned by Jon. It sounds super-cook, and it made me cry to hear his idea….”

The necklace was fashioned by our friend Dora, who is both a goldsmith and our birth doula. It was finished almost exactly one month before Lucy was born: a silver heart, inscribed with the words “ANN THE BRAVE” on the back, dangling from a silver chain. From this moment, the necklace was a regular reminder of the courage I needed to harness in parenting.

This is a recording of Lucy’s heartbeat in utero.

Jon and I were both thinking at the time of the bravery I would need to physically birth a child — especially in trusting that my body could birth a full-term baby after three miscarriages — but we also had inklings of the ways I would need to be brave in learning to parent. I’m not sure that I required more bravery than other people, but I do know that my particular situation required me to be brave in my own way as I healed from clinical anxiety, examined the dysfunctional family dynamics I grew up with, and carved a new way of being a mother that differed significantly from the way I had been raised. I knew I had some serious work to do in order to become the mother I wanted to be and I took the challenge very seriously. Before and after Lucy’s birth, I read scores of parenting books, journaled daily, connected with friends through our blog, and prayed through it all.

The necklace in ordinary home life. (Photo by Ken White.)

Re-reading my journal from those early days of parenthood, I’m freshly reminded of all of the emotions — overflowing delight in our baby’s every movement, deep insecurity about taking on this huge responsibility, desperate exhaustion from lack of sleep, gratitude for life and friends and a growing baby in our lives. I was working so hard! Becoming a mother felt like a spiritual training program. I was learning to be present to joy, to listen deeply, to make space for needs, and to treat myself and others with kindness. Jon grew alongside me, tempering my moments of overwhelm with his gentle and logical perspective while offering a solid, reassuring presence through the whole adventure. The message of the pendant was proving to be true, and I loved having that reminder as I was called into places of courage.

The necklace came along on our first family trip to England in 2015. Here I am, giving scalp rubs to help the girls stay awake on that first jet-lagged day.

Fast forward to February 2023. Our family was on a trip to San Francisco, flown there through the generosity of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship for an event where I was to be honored for 25 years of service. What a treat to have the whole family there! After the festivities, we had a few days to explore the city — and on one of those days, I lost my pendant. Somewhere between Grace Cathedral and Fisherman’s Wharf, the clasp simply came unhooked and that precious “ANN THE BRAVE” heart made its way off my body and into some unknown crevice of a San Francisco street. You can imagine how much time we spent retracing our steps, hoping against hope that we would find it, but to no avail. I did my best to put on a good face, reminding us all that “things are replaceable,” but I was quite heartbroken.

In front of Bob’s Donuts. I think the necklace was gone by this time.

The loss of the pendant felt shockingly representative of the change taking place in our family. Our girls were on the cusp of turning 15 and 17, in the thick of teenagerhood. We were starting to plan college visits. Lucy was learning to drive. Rosie had grown taller than me. The world was changing. I could tell that I needed to learn to be a mother in a different way, but I wasn’t sure how to go about it — or how to appropriately grieve our family’s growth. After all, wasn’t growth the whole point? Why did I feel sad about achieving milestones that we had been working toward for years?

We took our first family visit to Wheaton College in April 2024 — and of course we had to explore the local ice cream shop.

Back at home, life ran along at its usual breakneck pace and at some point, it became clear that I needed a new pendant for a new stage of life. Our dear friend Dora continues to make beautiful jewelry as a goldsmith, so we commissioned another heart — this one with two tiny gems to represent Lucy and Rosie’s birthstones and the iconic ANN THE BRAVE lettering on the back. The necklace arrived on Mother’s Day 2023, and I wore it on our family trip to Warby Parker (to order my first pair of progressive lenses) and Jeni’s Ice Cream. The weight of the pendant felt good. I cherished it as a symbol of the next stage of learning to be a mother — and being brave through the process of change.

Change can be scary, there’s no doubt about it. But there can be true growth along the way. My journal these days reads a lot differently from my early days of parenting — most of the desperate anxieties have been replaced by a measure of trust in the process. The night I received the original necklace, I journaled, “…right now writing about it, I hope that I won’t need to be super-brave about lots of sad things in the future — I hope for lots of happy events & to be brave through those too.” We have had sad times that required bravery and we will have them again, but I’m grateful for the happy events of this season and the bravery that helps me to soak up all of these new adventures, one slice of Costco cake at a time.

So what is your adventure? Because the Adventures of Ann the Brave isn’t just about me. It’s a place for all of us to acknowledge the courage we need to step forward into the future, embracing the new and changing landscape of parenting. It’s a place to learn about staying present to ourselves and our loved ones as we grow into the people we are becoming. And it’s a place where we can find the new adventures that are awaiting us on our horizon.

Where are you being called to be brave? What feels scary to you right now? What adventures are you being invited into?