It was the flat, wordless, bottomless no of a mother who has been told, by the cold and the dark and her own exhausted body, that it is time to give up — and who answers, from somewhere below thought, that she will not.

I did not have to be brave to keep walking.

I only had to refuse to stop, one step at a time, for as long as it took.

And I want to say to anyone who ever finds themselves in their own version of that vault, in whatever form it takes: you may not feel brave.

You may feel exactly as frightened and as weak as I felt.

It does not matter.