Finding the Courage to Feel

By Sarah E. Westfall

God's Brave Women - Sarah's Story

I don’t know when or where I learned to hide my emotions.

Perhaps it was that day in kindergarten when I wore my favorite dress and another girl called me fat, and I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of seeing me cry. Or in junior high, when I tried to punch a boy who was teasing me, only to be mocked by his acne-clad friends who chanted “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, no one can beat Mohammed Ali!” I ran away crying. Maybe it began the day a teacher at my Christian high school questioned my sexuality, because I seemed “too emotionally attached” to my best friend at the time.

Maybe it was a combination of all these things.

One way or another, I got the message: Overt emotion equaled instability—qualities undesirable in a woman, a leader, certainly in public. If I wanted friends, success and easy living, my feelings were best buried than laid bare.

And so, I perfected the art of repression.

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"Overt emotion equaled instability—qualities undesirable in a woman, a leader, certainly in public. If I wanted friends, success and easy living, my feelings were best buried than laid bare.

And so, I perfected the art of repression."

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