Getting older, and hopefully wiser, is part of the process. The wild is where I stand up for what I believe, decide to be who I am and embrace it. ‘Once we’ve found the courage to stand alone, to say what we believe and do what we feel is right despite the criticism and fear, we may leave the wilderness, but the wild has marked our hearts.’įor me, the wild is where I find the courage to lay aside embarrassment, a sense of shame, and feelings of inadequacy. But … twinges of the past make me limp sometimes. I don’t feel like I have to fit in anywhere, I don’t have to be like anyone else. I have a community of family and friends who really know me and accept me as I am. I’m at a place in life where I feel like I’m somewhere I want to be. I’ve pushed through some tough patches in this journey towards belonging. Out the other side, my feet had nerve damage, my toes were munted into ugly appendages, and it took a few weeks before I stopped having flashbacks to endless footsteps.
Six days of incredible physical, emotional, and spiritual stress stretched me past my limits and into new territory. I had to dig deep to find the physical and mental strength to keep going on that climb. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done–harder than two difficult births. I find that even if I’m limping, I have an inner strength that keeps me going. And, at the end of the day, we enter true belonging, with all the bruises and scars we earned along the way. We all develop enduring limps in the wilderness. We all develop losses, hurts, and failures in the wilderness. The wilderness is where we stop freaking out about our vulnerability and just embrace it, often because we can’t outrun it.īrené Brown says, ‘the cost of true belonging is carrying the pain of the wilderness with us wherever we go.’ The wilderness is where we ‘ grow a spine‘.
Going along with the flow may build peace around you, but inside is another story. I thought of myself as empathetic, but I was probably more acquiescent.
The tension between a strong back and a soft front reveals that true belonging requires both courage and vulnerability.
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