A Story About Brenda - and Choosing Love Over Fear

There are moments in life that shape you quietly, long before you know they matter. Brenda was one of mine.

I met her in eighth grade. She was big, strong, loud, and honestly… a little scary.

Most people kept their distance. I did too, until the day I bumped into her in the hallway and she told me she wanted to fight after school.

I knew I couldn’t win. I also knew I was tired of being afraid.

So I met her - heart pounding - in the small gym.

And instead of raising my fists, I said something that surprised both of us: “I don’t want to fight you. I want to be your friend.” She looked at me like she had never heard those words before. I chose love over fear.

And somehow, something shifted right there. We didn’t become best friends, we didn’t do sleepovers or pass notes in class, but from that day on, we carried a quiet connection. The kind that doesn’t need much to stay alive.

Years later, when we were seniors, everything changed again.

Brenda had a breakdown at school.

She held a knife to the principal and in her fear and pain, in that moment, she said the only person she would talk to… was me.

They pulled me out of basketball practice and asked if I would help.

My parents said yes.

I sat with her, talked with her, and helped her take the next step.  That next step was a short stay at a mental health hospital.

She only agreed to go if I would ride with her.

So I did.

Both of us in the back of a police car, headed toward help. During her stay, I visited when I could… but I wrote to her every week. Encouraging words, silly quotes, anything that might remind her she mattered.

She came back to school.

Graduated.

Survived what could have been a much bigger storm.

Life moved on, and so did we, but we never really lost touch.

Christmas cards. Letters here and there. A thread of connection we didn’t force - it just… stayed.

Fast forward twenty years.

I was going through a divorce.

The kind of heartbreak that leaves you raw and quiet.

This was my heartbreak, and I was not prepared to share it with her yet. 

Then one day I wrote her a letter - not dramatic, not detailed, just honest.

And she sent one back. Inside her card was a note I had written to her all those years ago when she was in the hospital.

She had kept it.

Folded, worn, saved.

She said it was one of the things that had gotten her through the hardest moments of her life.

And now she was sending it back to me… because she believed I needed the same reminder.

Today, Brenda texts me every day.

Her life is still hard in many ways - harder than most people will ever know - but she carries a love that is fierce and tender and real.

She is, without even trying, one of the biggest proofs in my life that love matters.

That soft doesn’t mean weak.

That connection can happen between the most unlikely people.

And that one moment of choosing love over fear can change the shape of someone’s entire story.

Brenda is my reminder that love begins in the heart…

and ends with a period.