From magic 5, we became four.
I was 16 when my father died. Until that moment, my mother was a simple housewife. My father supported her in every way. She was shy, a little timid, someone who stayed close to home and close to us. Then life hit. And overnight, the woman I thought I knew became someone I was still trying to understand decades later.
She walked into banks alone. She sat in government offices and spoke to officials with quiet, polished calm. She attended my school meetings in English she wasn’t entirely comfortable in. She filled forms she had never filled before. And every evening she came home and cooked our favourite dishes.
Not for a single moment did she let us feel we had lost our anchor.
We had our grief. But we also had her voice, steady and clear, this is life, no one lives forever, and we are all here, and we will live it to the fullest. The absence of one was felt every single day. But she would not let that house break. We celebrated festivals. We laughed. We went out for dinners. Slowly, life became normal again.
And she always said one thing I only truly understood much later.
Life is to be lived on your own.
Not alone. But on your own strength. On your own terms.
I thought I understood that when I moved to Qatar. When I said yes to a job I had never done before. When I filled a marathon form three months after surgery without a training plan.
But I only felt it in my bones the day I received my cancer diagnosis.
I watched my husband get jittery. I felt my siblings rally around me. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I remembered my mother. I remembered what she would have done. What she had already done. And that memory gave me the strength to face each day as it came, present, steady, one day at a time.
She built her life one day at a time. From a government flat we had to vacate after my father passed, to everything we have today. A life he would have been proud of.
She never told me to be brave.
She just was. Every single day. Quietly. Without credit. Without complaint.
My mother did not choose her circumstances. She chose how she lived inside them. She made the present better because it was the only thing she could control.
Decades later I met a woman who had choices my mother never had. Security. Status. A title that gave her permission to do less. And she chose to do more anyway. Not from necessity. From passion. From a genuine desire to make a difference.
Different women. Different lives. But the same refusal to shrink.
I see that courage every day in a colleague I am privileged to work with.
She is a mother, quietly carrying more than most people in that office will ever know. One of the first women in her family to enter the workforce. A qualified finance professional who has risen to a senior leadership role. On paper, that is her story. But it is not what I notice about her.
What I notice is how she walks into a room.
Whether she is speaking to the CEO or to me, the tone is identical. The same humility. The same respect. The same presence. She doesn’t adjust herself depending on who is watching. She is simply, completely, herself, in every conversation, at every level, in every moment.
She makes everything look effortless. Not because she is superhuman. But because she understands people deeply, leads with empathy, and always asks herself one quiet question before she acts, how would the CEO see this situation? She thinks at the level she serves, not the level she sits at.
And when the criticism comes, and it does come, she doesn’t flinch.
She says something I have written down and kept.
“I am here to work for the CEO and the company. Not to please anyone. Not to make a pretty impression. What is fair is fair.”
No drama. No defence. No need for the room to agree with her. She sees the big picture and she stays in it, even when the people around her are playing small.
She mentors her team while managing everything herself. She sends people for training. She tells them to take their leave. She takes care of others as naturally as she breathes, without making it a performance, without waiting for anyone to notice.
During my illness, it was she who encouraged me to meet the CEO. I hesitated. She didn’t. She knew what I needed before I did. And when I walked into that meeting, he supported me completely. I admired her before that moment. After it, I understood her.
She never makes her struggle visible. But I see it. And I am in awe of it.
Two women. Different generations. Different worlds. Same truth.
Neither of them waited for permission to be who they were. Neither of them needed the room to applaud before they gave their best. Neither of them told me to be brave.
They just were. Every single day.
My mother taught me, life is to be lived on your own.
My colleague shows me, do your work, see the big picture, what is fair is fair.
Who shaped the version of you that shows up when it matters most? And have you ever told them?
I have borrowed courage from both of them more times than they will ever know.
This is the kind of quiet strength I help leaders recognise in themselves, the version of them that was always there, long before anyone called it courage.
With love,
Usha Executive Leadership Coach | Leading Well When It Matters Most
Usha Nagrani, an HR Leader turned ICF Executive Coach, empowers senior management professionals and business leaders to achieve breakthroughs as expats, build cross-cultural teams, and navigate the exciting journey of career acceleration.
