My husband has "Sine metu" tattooed down his left side. Allow me to translate - "Without fear". I have it inscribed on the inside of my engagement ring. When we first met, I thought that meant he was fearless, but once when we were lying in bed while still in the throes of early dating lust, I asked him how he jumped out of airplanes without being scared. He laughed and said "Oh, I'm terrified. But, you feel the fear and then you do it anyway." It's become the mantra of our household. It's okay to be afraid, scared, even terrified, and still do the thing anyway. It's the preparedness, the mental fortitude, the resilience, that back up the bravery. Thank you for this assertion. It makes all of us who spend our lives scared but relatively prepared feel much more adept at existence. 🫶
Your story, this synchronicity, Jess, literally gives me butterflies, goosebumps, itchy palms… the whole nine. What a tremendous gift you’ve shared with me, and between you and your husband… 🥹
And good grief, your mantra—it’s exactly that clarity of concept + action that we all need more of. 🧡🙌🏻♾️!!!
I'm pretty sure he just wanted something to scream while he was being thrown out of a perfectly good airplane, but it's worked its way to something a bit more meaningful, for sure. I love that "clarity of concept + action". Going to noodle on how to implement just that in more areas of our lives. 🤔
Love this playful, deep analysis of my fave topic: Fear.
Mostly Brave is about naming and claiming our Fears, then doing the thing. Most prefer to run from Fear, buck up, squash it, ignore it, hide in shame, and eat lots of chips. (Patriarchy strikes again?)
I'm grateful for Brene Brown's research. And for your truth-telling. It's risky. Therefore, brave.
PS: "Feel the fear and do it anyway" is a book by Susan Jeffers.
Your sub is right up my alley, Christine, and just gained a reader.
I haven’t yet written about it much, but I’m super fascinated by the evolutionary psychology of fear, paired with our current culture of comfort. Fear used to keep us safe from things that could eat us, now it keeps us from doing the stuff that matters to us. Whaaaaat?
Thanks too for the rec; I’ve come across it but haven’t read. So glad to connect!
Thank you so much, Bree! Especially for subscribing 🥰
I’m making a graphic novel, “Meet Your Monkeys,” in the realm of your Venn Diagram of fear/comfort. My limbic mammalian Monkey brain prefers a tribal/familial comfort zone, safe from the social risks urged by my authentic, creative self. Dang it!
My pleasure, Christine!! 🙌🏻 And boy do I love the sound of ‘Meet your Monkeys’! We really don’t talk about it enough, how our brains haven’t evolved at near the same rate as our technology. We simply don’t know what to do with those damned monkeys!
Ahh, thank you SO MUCH for your encouragement. This project is in fallow mode since I began publishing on Substack. It wants to be more of a story…and a short film (or is that my Overthinking ADHD Monkey 🙈?)
Your intro is brilliant: "These last couple weeks, though, I’ve been working a particular puzzle, seemingly borne of nothing and everything all at once—a kerplunk of a question that fell like an apple in an open field. As if from nowhere, but immediately identifiable. I know this fleshy, roundish thing, I even eat one most days of my life, but… why now? Why here?" It really drew me in. A great essay, Bree.
Dear Bree, I’m so glad to have found your post! I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about courage from the years my mom faced and beat stage four ovarian cancer to my husband facing and surviving a malignant brain tumor. Years later I was lucky enough to land a job with a nonprofit called the Canter for Courage & Renewal and got to interview over 120 people about courage to write a book called The Courage Way. One researcher I met studied courage in the workplace. Here’s a couple of paragraphs from that book:
Not recognizing or acknowledging our own courage isn’t simply a matter of humility. When we examine our own behavior, we have access to our own interior landscape. We know that what looks risky from the outside isn’t necessarily that risky inside.
“Just because you don’t see this thing you did as extra courageous doesn’t mean courage doesn’t exist,” Worline told me. “Courage exists in the space where people see others as exemplars. That is a generative tension. It doesn’t erase the effect of that courage in the social space.”
Courage exists in the spaces between us. That’s worth repeating and imagining. Courage is not only in our hearts: when it happens and is witnessed, it becomes part of the space between us. Poet John O’Donohue speaks of blessing the space between us, of that moment when courage is kindled and we learn to find ease with risk.
Another great book that jumped off the shelf at me in a used bookstore was The Courage to Create by Rollo May. He wrote of the differences between physical, moral, social and creative courage. Bree Newsome (the activist who took down the Confederate flag from the state house in S.C.) coined the phrase collective courage.
I love the idea of so many different types of courage that “exemplars” display, often because they have no choice or are very prepared, like you. It seems to boil down to that trust in yourself that comes from all the inner work, &/or trust in life or in each other to share. Thank you for sharing!! :)
Shelly! And I’m so glad to have been found! You know more than a little on this topic, and what an auspicious series of connections we share even beyond it.
(First… I’m so sorry for the late reply to your wonderfully thoughtful comment. In returning to this thread, noticed I replied to my own post accidentally 🫣)
I’m absolutely rapt with curiosity about your story and experiences, and love everything you’ve noted here about the fomative spaces we share through our exemplifying of bravery… its communal power. YES.
Might you be interested in a sidebar conversation? I have so many questions!
I've done what others would consider brave things (or foolhardy, take your pick) and they were always in a situation where I did not feel I had a choice to remain =me= and not do them. In truth, I was mostly not thinking, I was reacting to an out of the ordinary situation where I was it. I was the choice. No one else was going to do it and so I had to.
Things I would consider brave are also things where I did not feel like I really had a choice to not do it and remain me. Others would not recognize them as brave, but they were situations where I knew I had things to lose, sometimes almost everything, and I did them anyway. They were not obviously life-threatening, but they mattered to me.
Also, there are times when I have failed to be brave when I should have been. Those are very hard to live with.
I really like this point you’re making, about how perception changes the meaning of bravery between doer and observer, that there are even interpretations about the value of bravery that completely depend on the individual. What’s brave to one may be totally idiotic to another, but/and, maybe even still gets labeled the same.
And also, love what you’re saying about doing a thing you feel you had no choice but to do, in order to stay aligned with your YOU. I really feel this… much of why I’ve felt so hot about being called brave for doing everything I can to heal my body is exactly this. Is there actually a choice here?? There is of course, but not for me.
Thanks so much for your thoughtful comments and for sharing with such honesty, @illustr8d. Bravery lives here.
What an excellent post and I absolutely LOVED being able to hear you read it! Thank you for all of this but especially for the important reminder that "knowledge begets capability which breeds confidence which leads to preparedness which culminates in… bravery." So true!
Olympics-schmalympics, Irby for the 🥇!! What an earthshaking delight seeing your words and feedback here, dearest friend. And I’m so completely stoked you like the audio too! ❤️🔥 Big win indeed.
My husband has "Sine metu" tattooed down his left side. Allow me to translate - "Without fear". I have it inscribed on the inside of my engagement ring. When we first met, I thought that meant he was fearless, but once when we were lying in bed while still in the throes of early dating lust, I asked him how he jumped out of airplanes without being scared. He laughed and said "Oh, I'm terrified. But, you feel the fear and then you do it anyway." It's become the mantra of our household. It's okay to be afraid, scared, even terrified, and still do the thing anyway. It's the preparedness, the mental fortitude, the resilience, that back up the bravery. Thank you for this assertion. It makes all of us who spend our lives scared but relatively prepared feel much more adept at existence. 🫶
Your story, this synchronicity, Jess, literally gives me butterflies, goosebumps, itchy palms… the whole nine. What a tremendous gift you’ve shared with me, and between you and your husband… 🥹
And good grief, your mantra—it’s exactly that clarity of concept + action that we all need more of. 🧡🙌🏻♾️!!!
I'm pretty sure he just wanted something to scream while he was being thrown out of a perfectly good airplane, but it's worked its way to something a bit more meaningful, for sure. I love that "clarity of concept + action". Going to noodle on how to implement just that in more areas of our lives. 🤔
Whatever flies that kite. 🤣
Let me know how that noodling goes, would you? It’s power combo that one!
Absolutely!
I love this, Bree. Beautifully written and eloquently spoken.
Nolan, I am so tremendously grateful to share this space with you. Your attention and careful read… it’s just magic. Period.
WTF IS BRAVE, ANYWAY?
Love this playful, deep analysis of my fave topic: Fear.
Mostly Brave is about naming and claiming our Fears, then doing the thing. Most prefer to run from Fear, buck up, squash it, ignore it, hide in shame, and eat lots of chips. (Patriarchy strikes again?)
I'm grateful for Brene Brown's research. And for your truth-telling. It's risky. Therefore, brave.
PS: "Feel the fear and do it anyway" is a book by Susan Jeffers.
WTF indeed!!!
Your sub is right up my alley, Christine, and just gained a reader.
I haven’t yet written about it much, but I’m super fascinated by the evolutionary psychology of fear, paired with our current culture of comfort. Fear used to keep us safe from things that could eat us, now it keeps us from doing the stuff that matters to us. Whaaaaat?
Thanks too for the rec; I’ve come across it but haven’t read. So glad to connect!
Thank you so much, Bree! Especially for subscribing 🥰
I’m making a graphic novel, “Meet Your Monkeys,” in the realm of your Venn Diagram of fear/comfort. My limbic mammalian Monkey brain prefers a tribal/familial comfort zone, safe from the social risks urged by my authentic, creative self. Dang it!
An honor!!! Delighted to take a peek and will dm you with some reader 💕. What a treat!
Aww 🥰 THANK YOU so much. My monkeys whispered it was too big of an ask, given that we just ‘met!’ 🙈
My pleasure, Christine!! 🙌🏻 And boy do I love the sound of ‘Meet your Monkeys’! We really don’t talk about it enough, how our brains haven’t evolved at near the same rate as our technology. We simply don’t know what to do with those damned monkeys!
Ahh, thank you SO MUCH for your encouragement. This project is in fallow mode since I began publishing on Substack. It wants to be more of a story…and a short film (or is that my Overthinking ADHD Monkey 🙈?)
Perhaps you’ll grace me with your honest reaction to a few pages: https://www.heartsquest.com/meet-your-monkeys-graphic-novel
Your intro is brilliant: "These last couple weeks, though, I’ve been working a particular puzzle, seemingly borne of nothing and everything all at once—a kerplunk of a question that fell like an apple in an open field. As if from nowhere, but immediately identifiable. I know this fleshy, roundish thing, I even eat one most days of my life, but… why now? Why here?" It really drew me in. A great essay, Bree.
Jeffrey, your attentions… as if crowned on the throne. Blushing too. Thank you, as ever, for your thoughtful reads!
Dear Bree, I’m so glad to have found your post! I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about courage from the years my mom faced and beat stage four ovarian cancer to my husband facing and surviving a malignant brain tumor. Years later I was lucky enough to land a job with a nonprofit called the Canter for Courage & Renewal and got to interview over 120 people about courage to write a book called The Courage Way. One researcher I met studied courage in the workplace. Here’s a couple of paragraphs from that book:
Not recognizing or acknowledging our own courage isn’t simply a matter of humility. When we examine our own behavior, we have access to our own interior landscape. We know that what looks risky from the outside isn’t necessarily that risky inside.
“Just because you don’t see this thing you did as extra courageous doesn’t mean courage doesn’t exist,” Worline told me. “Courage exists in the space where people see others as exemplars. That is a generative tension. It doesn’t erase the effect of that courage in the social space.”
Courage exists in the spaces between us. That’s worth repeating and imagining. Courage is not only in our hearts: when it happens and is witnessed, it becomes part of the space between us. Poet John O’Donohue speaks of blessing the space between us, of that moment when courage is kindled and we learn to find ease with risk.
Another great book that jumped off the shelf at me in a used bookstore was The Courage to Create by Rollo May. He wrote of the differences between physical, moral, social and creative courage. Bree Newsome (the activist who took down the Confederate flag from the state house in S.C.) coined the phrase collective courage.
I love the idea of so many different types of courage that “exemplars” display, often because they have no choice or are very prepared, like you. It seems to boil down to that trust in yourself that comes from all the inner work, &/or trust in life or in each other to share. Thank you for sharing!! :)
Shelly! And I’m so glad to have been found! You know more than a little on this topic, and what an auspicious series of connections we share even beyond it.
(First… I’m so sorry for the late reply to your wonderfully thoughtful comment. In returning to this thread, noticed I replied to my own post accidentally 🫣)
I’m absolutely rapt with curiosity about your story and experiences, and love everything you’ve noted here about the fomative spaces we share through our exemplifying of bravery… its communal power. YES.
Might you be interested in a sidebar conversation? I have so many questions!
I've done what others would consider brave things (or foolhardy, take your pick) and they were always in a situation where I did not feel I had a choice to remain =me= and not do them. In truth, I was mostly not thinking, I was reacting to an out of the ordinary situation where I was it. I was the choice. No one else was going to do it and so I had to.
Things I would consider brave are also things where I did not feel like I really had a choice to not do it and remain me. Others would not recognize them as brave, but they were situations where I knew I had things to lose, sometimes almost everything, and I did them anyway. They were not obviously life-threatening, but they mattered to me.
Also, there are times when I have failed to be brave when I should have been. Those are very hard to live with.
I really like this point you’re making, about how perception changes the meaning of bravery between doer and observer, that there are even interpretations about the value of bravery that completely depend on the individual. What’s brave to one may be totally idiotic to another, but/and, maybe even still gets labeled the same.
And also, love what you’re saying about doing a thing you feel you had no choice but to do, in order to stay aligned with your YOU. I really feel this… much of why I’ve felt so hot about being called brave for doing everything I can to heal my body is exactly this. Is there actually a choice here?? There is of course, but not for me.
Thanks so much for your thoughtful comments and for sharing with such honesty, @illustr8d. Bravery lives here.
💙
What an excellent post and I absolutely LOVED being able to hear you read it! Thank you for all of this but especially for the important reminder that "knowledge begets capability which breeds confidence which leads to preparedness which culminates in… bravery." So true!
Olympics-schmalympics, Irby for the 🥇!! What an earthshaking delight seeing your words and feedback here, dearest friend. And I’m so completely stoked you like the audio too! ❤️🔥 Big win indeed.