Braving The Wilderness: Ch 1 Thoughts + Questions

Hello Hello Hello! Let’s check in with our first chapter of “Braving The Wilderness”. Chapter one is titled Everywhere and Nowhere and whoa this chapter drew me in! I felt like I was jumping into the deep end of the pool and loving the space and freedom it gave me….if that makes sense. Here are some of my take aways from this first chapter.

• Courage is contagious
• You can not be brave with your life and never disappoint others. I have a hard time disappointing others so this was an “aha moment” for me.
• Belonging nowhere = pain….I think that’s why many painful moments in life are when we feel alone.
• We do many things with pain in order to not feel it. We numb or inflict it on others, we deny it or pass it onto loved ones, or we find EMPATHY for ourselves and own the pain. What a beautiful picture that is.
• I think its so key that she said “sometimes the most dangerous thing for kids is the silence that allows them to construct their own stories”… We all have stories we’ve made up of ourselves that start in childhood and we carry them into adulthood. Often times it’s not anyones fault it’s the experience that preempted the silence which resulted in believing a lie.
• Don’t study the moment. Be in it!” ahhhhh so hard to do but totally my life’s goal right now.
• Writing Permission Slips to ourselves. I loved this idea! Anyone else write a permission slip to themselves this week
• The Idea of belonging to yourself and thus you belong everywhere. I don’t even think I’ve wrapped my mind around this whole idea but oh it feels like soothing sweet honey! I love love love this thought and think I’ll carry it with me into my next awkward situation.
• Loved this quote: “You will always belong anywhere you show up as yourself and talk about yourself and your work in a real way.” It’s so hard to do that. Maybe we can all work on this together and by the end of chapter 7 we’ll have mastered it with strong backs and brave hearts.

• Questions: You can answer and discuss anything about these questions here in the comments but there is absolutely no need to… just answer in your journal and or thoughts.
  1) When was the first time you felt like you didn’t belong and why?
  2) What stories have you told about yourself?
  3) How do you feel about disappointing people and what do you do as a result?
  4) What do you think you need to work on or change in order to feel like you truly belong?
  5) What intentions are you setting for yourself that you want to follow through on in order to be brave and belong to yourself.
  6) What did you think about Maya Angelou’s poem about belong nowhere but truly belonging to yourself?