A few years ago I met a woman the world calls the Grandmother of Juneteenth. In our sorority, she is simply our Soror.

I was on crutches that day. A cuboid fracture, a boot on my foot, every step a negotiation with pain. I stood next to a woman who had walked — literally, for decades — for a cause most people hadn't even heard of until very recently.

I've thought about that moment every Juneteenth since. This year, with the holiday just behind us, I found myself thinking about it again — not about her history, which others can tell better than I can. About what standing next to her, in that condition, on that day, revealed to me.

She Held the Book. I Held the Crutches.

I didn't think about the irony in the moment. I was just glad to be there, glad my body had gotten me into that room even in a boot. It's only looking back that I see what was actually happening.

She never waited to be steady before she moved. She walked while uncertain. She walked before there was a holiday to justify it. She walked when the only proof she had that it mattered was her own conviction that it did.

I was waiting to heal before I trusted myself to move forward on anything. She never had that luxury, and she didn't ask for it.

You Don't Need to Be Steady to Start

A few weeks ago I opened an old journal entry and found three lessons I'd written to myself: I don't need validation from others. If I want something done, I have to trust myself. Don't be afraid to bet on myself.

I didn't connect it to her until just now, writing this. But she is the proof I didn't know I already had. You don't need to be steady to start. You need to be willing.

I've spent so much of this year waiting for the right conditions — enough energy, enough certainty, enough proof it'll work — before I let myself move on something that matters. She showed me, without saying a word to me directly, that the walking and the certainty don't arrive in that order. The walking comes first. The proof comes after, if it comes at all.

My daughter was standing right there when I learned that. I didn't plan it as a lesson for her. I just didn't want to miss the chance to be in that room. But she watched her mother go anyway — boot, crutches, and all — to stand next to a woman who never waited for steady either. I don't know yet what that planted in her. I just know it mattered that she saw it.

We've made a point to keep honoring her since that day — not because the photograph was special, though it was, but because she keeps being a measuring stick I return to when I'm tempted to wait for permission.

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