Radical Courage

In celebration of our newest arrival I’ve invited some of my favorite bloggers to guest post. Today Tara from The Organic Sister is here to share some of her radical wisdom with us.

I’ve never seen myself as a particularly courageous person, but the more experience I have with life and the more strangers with whom we converse, the more I begin to realize just how the absence of fear (or sometimes the embracing of it) has shaped us and our life, and just how radical that can look to anyone who has yet to experience it.

I can’t say I’ve never experienced fear. Things often look absolutely terrifying from the outside. Before we convince ourselves to look under life’s bed we believe it can hold any number of scary monsters ready to tear our lives, our dreams and our families apart.

Oh, I’ve been there. I know the paralyzing effect fear plays in our common, ordinary lives. It’s a lot like those scary dreams in which something is coming for us and we just can’t move our legs to get away. We’re petrified into thinking the worst and remaining immobile in those feelings. But there’s one thing I’ve recognized in my experience: Just when I think the worst is about to happen, I wake up and realize my emotions and my perspectives were merely a dream.

In just the past four years, I’ve:

Overcome my fear of business failure. I sold a business for no other reason than it was making us miserable and made the choice to be with my family. I was terrified of the professional backlash and my image, but I learned that it just didn’t matter what others thought compared to the joy such a choice brought us.

Learned that I am exactly the person my child needs. I thought I couldn’t be human, couldn’t make mistakes, couldn’t be “wishy-washy”. I parented out of fear of myself and fear of “ruining” my child. But I’ve found making mistakes, learning the fine art of apologizing and taking back the stupid things I’ve done and insisted on is exactly what my child needs from me.

Come to understand that children can be trusted. I no longer think they need to be controlled to “behave” or told what to eat, when to sleep or how to learn, but instead have experienced that transformational results of embracing my child’s personality, guiding him with unconditional compassion and respecting him as a whole and unique individual. I wouldn’t trade our current relationship for what we had before for anything.

Challenged my fear of personal failure. In the past year we’ve lost a steady income, a home and will soon lose our health insurance. We’ve given away our possessions, our “stability” and our credit score. Now we travel the country in a vintage RV, exploring and seeking and loving what we find. It took dropping below the “poverty line” to realize just how rich we were. Rich in time and love, in creativity and adventure.

Allowed my beauty to be dictated by my personal definition of self-worth. My feminine appearance was so closely tied together with my perceived “value” that it was hard to accept the fact that some people will look at me differently because I don’t often wear makeup, don’t own a single pair of high heels and love my dreadlocked hair. But the spiritual lessons it’s imparted are profound and amazing for me.

Accepted that living is messy but life is still good. Serious back, joint and other health issues limit me every day and sometimes can leave me in bed for several. But even through the worst of my pain and the scary prognosis for my future, I can still laugh wholeheartedly, love passionately and live bravely.

Lost a father and realized I can still breath. Nothing shakes me to my core like the thought of losing a person I love. But through the most difficult time in my life, I learned that death can be a means of waking us up to the fact that life is not just for living…but preferably for living out loud.

We’ve gotten a lot of negative responses to our choices: A lot of honest concerns, plenty of harsh judgment, many frustrating assumptions and even a few negative predictions. We’ve received nasty words, shocking insults and rude looks all for doing something radically outside the norm.

We’ve also heard plenty of “I’m so jealous!” and “I really wish I could that but I just can’t”. To many it seems that what we do is some elusive lifestyle only available to a lucky few.

That’s just not true. Our life is not radically different than anyone we’ve met but for one particular choice: We consistently choose trust. We embrace what comes our way, we allow our fears without accepting our immobilization, and we keep just keeping flying on trust.

“The reason birds can fly and we can’t is simply that they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.” – James Matthew Barrie

Tagged as: consciousness, guest post