He was a frightened ten-year-old holding a microphone in front of two hundred adults, telling the truth about his father to the man’s own face, and the only thing steady about him was his refusal to stop.

Courage is not the absence of fear; I had read that somewhere and never understood it until I stood with my hand on my shaking son’s shoulder and watched him choose, word by word, to keep going.

I did not take him out of the room.

I had meant to.

But you do not interrupt a person in the middle of the bravest thing they will ever do.

So I left my hand where it was, so he would know I was behind him, and I let him finish.