There is a story I carry with me always — one that was not just told to me, but lived in front of me, every single day of my childhood.
My mother fought in the Second World War. When the Nazis invaded Greece, she was stationed in a cabin in the mountains, caring for patients and hiding Jews with the Red Cross. One day, Nazi soldiers marched into the cabin and raised their machine guns. Most people would have frozen. My mother stood up.
In perfect German, with every ounce of her inner force, she said: “Put down the guns. You have no right to shoot. We are with the Red Cross.”
They obeyed her.
And then — because this was simply who she was — she looked at one of the soldiers who had picked up her comb and said, “Can I have my comb back? Because I need it more than you.”
She used to tell my sister Arianna and me, “I have faced fear dead on, and I overcame it, so nothing scares me anymore in my life.” She didn’t say this to boast. She said it to show us the way.
My mother has passed, but I feel her presence with me constantly. When I ask her spirit what to do in difficult times, I can still hear her answer:
“Don’t be consumed by the news. Put your full attention into anything you do. Eat slowly. Live fully every moment. And darling — don’t give into fear. You’re bigger than that.”
Her fearlessness wasn’t reserved for wartime. It showed up in the everyday, too — in the small, practical, wildly brave acts of a mother determined to open the world for her daughters.
When my sister dreamed of studying at Cambridge, we were living in a one-bedroom apartment in Athens. The idea of England, of that ancient university, seemed impossibly out of reach. My mother’s response? “Let’s go and see what it looks like.” She took my sister to Cambridge, walked her through the town, let her breathe the air of the place, and helped her see herself there — before it had happened, before there was any guarantee it would. Two years later, my sister was admitted.
When I dreamed of studying acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, my mother found an actor in Athens who had graduated from the academy, tracked down a teacher who could prepare me, and when that first teacher failed to see my talent and discouraged me, my mother didn’t collapse. She simply said, “She doesn’t get you. She’s not the right teacher.” And then — with her signature audacity — she asked that very teacher to recommend someone better.
Someone better was found. I got in.
This is what fearlessness actually looks like. Not the absence of uncertainty, but the refusal to let uncertainty make your decisions for you.
I think about this often when people come to me feeling stuck — paralyzed by a career crossroads, a difficult relationship, a dream that seems too big for the life they’re currently living. Fear has a very convincing voice. It tells us the timing isn’t right, that we’re not ready, that others have something we don’t.
But here’s what I’ve learned from my mother and from the great spiritual teachers in my life: fear is not the truth about who you are. It is produced by the most primitive part of our minds — the part that exists to keep us safe, not to help us soar. When we mistake our fear for wisdom, we stop just short of everything that was waiting for us.
The invitation — always — is to name the fear. To look at it directly, the way my mother looked at those raised machine guns, and say: I see you. But you don’t have the final word here.
What is stopping you right now? What are you afraid of? Name it. Say it out loud or write it down. There is something quietly powerful about bringing a fear out of the shadows and into the light. It almost always turns out to be smaller than it felt in the dark.
And then, find your role models — the people in your own life, or in history, or in the pages of the books you love — who walked through something hard and came out the other side. Let their spirit remind you of the spirit that lives in you.
The Prayer
This prayer is for anyone who feels held back by fear — fear of failure, fear of not being enough, fear of taking the next step into the unknown.
Dear Beloved,
As I move forward in my journey, I ask to find the courage to move past my fear, knowing that the mighty spirit that lives in me is so much bigger than my fear.
Show me how to transform my fear into trust and my insecurity into confidence. Show me how to transform my scared voice into my sacred voice.
Let me walk this path, step by step, holding your invisible hand, hearing the inner guidance in me. Although I might not feel it fully or comprehend it, I am willing to let my higher power take the lead.
Show me where the opportunities are and lead me to the support I need, so I can see my vision clearly and draw strength from it.
As I speak these words, I release the illusion that I am walking alone, and I receive the support that shows me, in practical, small ways, that I can expand beyond my fear.
I move from I can’t to I am.
So be it.
My mother paved the path of fearlessness for everyone she touched. She didn’t have a script. She simply had an unshakeable trust that life would meet her if she kept moving forward.
That trust is available to you, too. It lives in you, right now, underneath the fear. You don’t have to wait until the fear disappears to take the next step. You just have to be willing to take it — and let the spirit in you lead the way.
This post is adapted from Agapi Stassinopoulos‘s book Speaking with Spirit: 52 Prayers to Guide, Inspire, and Uplift You (Harmony Books).