Facing Fear

The Breath Before the Word

Rain tapped the window of my office like a slow heartbeat. It was 7:47 p.m., the last client gone, the city quieting. Mark sat across from me, a veteran who’d spent three years in the field before the panic attacks started. He’d come in for his sixth session, always late, always with his knuckles white on the chair arms.

This time, he didn’t talk about the ambush. Or the weight of the pack. Or the silence after the last radio call. He just looked at his hands.

“I can’t do it,” he said, voice barely above the rain. “The panic… it’s like I’m back there. But I’m not. I’m just… here.”

He didn’t say I need help. Not yet. He just sat with the fear, raw and unvarnished, in the space between his words. And then he did something small. He closed his eyes. Took a breath. Not a deep one, not a dramatic one. Just… a breath. In. Out.

That’s when I saw it. Not the fear, but the choice to face it without flinching. Not the roar of courage, but the quiet surrender to the moment. He didn’t fight the panic. He let it be there, and he breathed anyway.

I’ve seen soldiers stand tall under fire. I’ve seen them break in the ER. But this? This was different. This was the moment courage stopped being about doing and started being about being. About letting the fear exist without letting it own you.

That breath stayed with me. Not because it was big, but because it was real. The bravest thing I’ve ever witnessed wasn’t a charge into battle—it was a man sitting still, breathing through the terror, and choosing to stay.

Courage isn’t what you think. It’s not the absence of fear. It’s the quiet decision to breathe through it. To say, “I’m scared. And I’m still here.”

So if you’re sitting in your own quiet storm right now, take that breath. Just one. In. Out. You don’t have to be strong. You just have to be here.

— Lois Brown, still serving

— Tracy Carlson, saying the thing since 2018