What is courage? Courage is the ability to confront fear, pain, danger, uncertainty, or intimidation. Everyone has courage, even if they don’t think they do. I know for a fact that I have more courage than I could have ever thought of.
You can only know how much courage you have, when you are placed in a situation that forces you to have it. For me, that came April of my sophomore year of high school. I was placed in a situation where my courage was put to the test. I was raped. In a situation like that the only thing that really keeps you alive after is courage.
I had the strength afterwards to continue to live my life. I could have just stayed in a never-ending state of depression and not dealt with it. However, I was able to pick myself up, with the help of others, and live my life.
Now, because of my experiences, I know that I have to courage to do anything. I have the courage to survive the most traumatic events, and come out a better person because of what I’ve learned.
I have the courage to grow into whatever I can so that I can survive and be a better person in turn. If my life has taught me anything thus far it’s that I have the courage to grow.
I love this piece, beginning with a question in this case was powerful and then continuing to answer that question was also powerful. One suggestion I would give would be to expand more on examples of yourself being courageous or just expand on that one example of courage. Thank you for sharing <3
ReplyDeleteI'll start by saying it took courage to share this piece.
ReplyDeleteWhat I like about this piece and, basically your writing in general, is that it's always clear to the reader what your point is. You get right to the point; for example, beginning with your definition of courage. It made me excited to read more.
However, I feel that this story has so much more potential. With as to-the-point as you are, you seem to skip over elaborating. In relation to your anecdote, for example, the only emotion you even mention is "depression" which is really such a broad emotion. Maybe present us with a paragraph of ways this depression shaped who you were. Or maybe it didn't shape you, in which case maybe tell us how you covered it up.
Also, the next-to-last paragraph is really weak. You're saying about how you've taken so much from your past experiences but all the reader has to go on is one experience, and while it's no doubt a traumatizing experience maybe you could add another and add weight to the piece. In the story you presented to the big workshop you mentioned your sister's thoughts of suicide. No doubt that took courage for you to cope with. Maybe you could add that, just a thought; it would give more relevance to your last two paragraphs.
Great piece on courage.
ReplyDeleteI liked that you let the reader know what courage meant to you. I also liked that you gave the reader insight on your past and your heartaches.
I think you could of fixed a few things like paragraph punctuation and sentence format but besides that nothing really needs to be changed because I loved it all.