Kelly Corrigan

My friend's father, in his final days, addled by dementia, chased her around the second floor with a fork he hid in his pajamas.

They tell you there will be loss.

They don't tell you you will be required to love your dad even as he's coming for you with silverware.

I've interviewed 228 people from my PBS show and my podcast, people with huge careers, Grammys and Pulitzers and NBA championships.

And I listen to their stories, and I'm duly impressed.

But I'll tell you the ones they know the best, the ones they can't tell without choking up.

the moment when Bryan Stevenson's grandmother or Steve Kerr's father or Samantha Power's stepfather or Cecile Richards' mom was right there with the right words or the right silence at the right moment.

This bravery I'm talking about might even be better understood if you look at the smaller moments of injury in family life, when there's not really an answer, or it might be your fault, or it might remind you of something you'd rather forget.

or because people are so suggestible, and the wrong tone or expression or phrasing might somehow make things worse.

Say your kid was dropped from a group text.

They were in it, they mattered, they belonged, and then poof.

Or your husband blew the big deal at work, or your mom won't wear the diapers that would really help her get through Mahjong on Wednesdays.

And how should we calibrate the exquisite bravery to respond productively when someone in our family looks at us and says, do I know you?

I weigh myself before and after every meal.

I hear voices.

I steal.

I'm using again.

He raped me.

She says I raped her.

I cut myself.