Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone

All of these responses are normally code for Your emotion or opinion is making me uncomfortable or Suck it up and stay quiet.

First, approach bullshitting with generosity when possible. Don’t assume that people know better and they’re just being malicious or mean-spirited. In highly charged discussions, we can feel shame about not having an informed opinion and these feelings of “not enough” can lead us to bullshitting our way through a conversation.

Our work is to get to the place where we like ourselves and are concerned when we judge ourselves too harshly or allow others to silence us.

The second practice is civility. I found a definition of civility from the Institute for Civility in Government that very closely reflects how the research participants talked about civility. The organization’s cofounders, Cassandra Dahnke and Tomas Spath, write: Civility is claiming and caring for one’s identity, needs, and beliefs without degradi

A wild heart is awake to the pain in the world, but does not diminish its own pain. A wild heart can beat with gratitude and lean in to pure joy without denying the struggle in the world. We hold that tension with the spirit of the wilderness.

What difference do these stupid cupcakes really make? They matter because joy matters.

Sometimes a place can feel lonely because of some sense of a lack of closeness in the relationships that happen in that space. Other times, I think the inability to visualize yourself in connection with people you care about in a particular place makes a space feel lonely on its own.

I used my pattern recognition skills to anticipate what people wanted, what they thought, or what they were doing. I learned how to say the right thing or show up in the right way. I became an expert fitter-in, a chameleon. And a very lonely stranger to myself.

Joseph Campbell wrote, “If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.”