“How very little can be done under the spirit of fear,” Nightingale would later write. A good chunk of the first three decades of her life had been proof. But she also knew that there had been a brief moment where she had once not been afraid. She needed to seize that power inside herself again, to break out on her own and accept the call she had been given to hear. It was a terrifying leap. Walking away from a life of ease. Flouting convention. The chorus of doubts and demands. Of course this had held her back—it holds so many of us back.
