"She had grit."

The image of that moment has been frozen in my mind for thirty years. It would make a perfect Norman Rockwell illustration, where each item, color, piece of clothing, and expression plays a critical part in a much larger story. 

The driver of the car was a young dark-haired woman, whose hands were fiercely gripped on the steering wheel with her elbows jutted out to the sides. Her face was pressed forward as if doing so might get her to her destination faster – sort of like a runner at the finish line. The modest car had apparently broken down and two young boys, dressed in their best church clothes, were pushing the car from the back bumper. The incline was steep so the boys were stretched out as far as they could reach, pushing with all their strength. A crying baby was in the back seat.

They were attempting to go to church and only had a few more yards before they could turn into the parking lot. I watched as several men and their families swerved around the car and turned in, completely ignoring this woman’s struggle. I couldn’t decide if they were embarrassed for her and thought it best to leave her alone, or if they simply didn’t care. 

The look on this mom’s face was something I will never forget. It was a mixture of frustration, exhaustion, and humiliation all at once. But the expression that rose to the top was sheer determination. She was not giving up and she had made up her mind to be a fighter. She had grit.

This woman worked for me. When I ran a horse farm for eight years, I always hired a woman as my live-in farm manager and when Julie took the job, she was married to a musician and had a small baby. But her husband soon left her and their infant – as well as his two children from a previous marriage. So, this incident just trying to take her newly structured family to church on a normal Sunday was just one more undeserved setback. I can imagine it was tempting to give up at that point.

I have always admired Julie for many reasons, but that moment and the expression on her face made a permanent impression on me. And I often see that same look today on the faces of the incredible women we serve at Blue Monarch.

Just the other day, as I was heading home, I found one of our moms down by the bus stop at the end of our driveway with her son and another resident. I rolled down my window and when she turned around, there was that same look. The “Julie look.” She was frustrated, exhausted, and embarrassed. Her son was refusing to walk home after getting off the bus and apparently this standoff had been going on for a while. Her friend was there for support, but didn’t seem to know how to help. I could see this mom was exasperated and close to tears. I’m sure it was tempting to revert to old discipline patterns that we don’t allow at Blue Monarch, so there was probably some resentment thrown in as well. It didn’t help that it was freezing cold, and her son was refusing to budge, even though he was clearly uncomfortable as he swayed back and forth to stay warm.

Nevertheless, despite all the other complicated emotions, the one that rose to the top in that moment was determination. Sheer grit. She was still willing to put forth the extra work, push through, and apply the parenting methods she had learned at Blue Monarch that have proven to work - even if they take lots of time and even more patience to get there.

The very next day, I saw that “Julie look” again. Another one of our moms has a little girl who is absolutely adorable. This child could be a child actor, and her personality is charming. However, there’s a very difficult side to this child that comes as a surprise because it’s in such a cute package. And because of her behavior, she often gets sent home from pre-school in the middle of the day. Once again, this little girl had to be picked up because she was misbehaving. 

“How many times has she been sent home?” I asked.

“This is the eighth time in just a few weeks,” the mom said. And there it was. The look. She was frustrated, exhausted, and humiliated. But with tears in her eyes she said, “I am going to get this. I am not giving up.”

These are the times when many moms would turn to drugs to cope if they were not at Blue Monarch with a supportive team circling around them. It’s the perfect storm if you think about it. Here is a mother who probably never saw healthy parenting growing up and in fact, may have been taught to use drugs by her own parents. She becomes an adult and has a child but by now she’s addicted to drugs and has no experience parenting her child sober. Then, because of what the child goes through, he develops some severe behaviors that are difficult to manage. And because of the chaos both have experienced, neither feels an attachment toward the other in the way most of us take for granted. So, now what?

Well, let’s add another element to that storm. We have all become very spoiled to taking the easy route. Think about it. We no longer need to do math, make change, remember a phone number, read a map, or even compose a sentence or correctly spell a word. We are slowly becoming lazy problem solvers. But that means our world is getting out of balance because in cases like the ones I just described, they must have the strength and fortitude to fight. There is no room for doing it the easy way or reverting to a device to fix it for them. It takes gut-wrenching, hard work and grit. 

I believe we sometimes long for a mountaintop experience, but we are not willing to climb the mountain to get there. 

However, a mother at Blue Monarch has made a commitment to climb that mountain. She puts on her combat boots every single morning before the sun comes up when she would rather sleep in. She struggles once again to get her kids ready for the day against all kinds of resistance. She maintains her Blue Monarch classes and recovery work, striving to apply every morsel she can in the short time she is with us. She does the difficult heart work and digs into her soul to see why she made the choices that landed her at a place like Blue Monarch. 

She takes a deep breath before her kids get back home in the afternoon and greets them with a smile and enthusiasm even though inside, she is afraid of the next outburst. She resists the temptation to strike out or yell when her child intentionally pushes the limits, and she finds the strength to embrace her child in the midst of his rage, and tell him she loves him, even though it still feels uncomfortable to say the words out loud. And she does this routine all over again the next day because yesterday she saw a tiny little glimpse of hope that her hard work was paying off - which may have been something as simple as, "I love you, Mama."

And that’s why the women of Blue Monarch are such warriors. They are willing to climb that mountain, despite the hard work and pain. And they get to relish that mountaintop experience – not because someone made it easy – but because they put in the enormous effort and earned every single bit of it, which they richly deserve.