I recently finished another book by one of my favorite authors.  Brene Brown’s book Braving the Wilderness spoke volumes to me with incredible timing as I find myself angry – angry at myself for not having enough bravery to speak my truth to others when given the opportunity.

Notice that I said MY truth, not THE truth.  I will never claim to know all and I hang out with enough ridiculously intelligent human beings to know where I stand among them.  I learn from these people all the time.  However, this does not diminish my life experience and my  intelligence and how I use those things to come to conclusions.  And yet, I find myself intimidated by those who are more articulate and/or more forceful in how they share their opinions.  I go along when everything in my body tells me differently or I stay completely quiet because I know my opinions/ideas will open up a huge can of worms, possibly unfavorably towards me.  So I keep it inside and just have to deal with chastising myself later for being afraid yet again.

So back to the book.  I plan to read it again because it was that powerful, but what I’ve picked up this time through is that, particularly at this time in our history/political and cultural climate, it is dangerous to speak your truth.  As I’ve written before, we’ve gotten really good at separating everyone into “either/or”.  Either you are with me or against me.  You fit in this political silo or that, you agree with this issue or you don’t which in someone else’s mind either makes you right or wrong.  There is no gray allowed.  And what happens is that you are either alienated by anyone who disagrees with you on any level, or you stay quiet so that nobody really knows what you think.  It’s easier to let them assume or guess than to have someone get angrily in your face and make you feel like a child, or worse yet, something less than human because you think or believe differently than they do.

But for those who choose to stand up for what they believe, braving the judgement and hate, they walk in the wilderness.  Walking in the wilderness means losing friends, receiving hate, questioning yourself.  But it can also mean great rewards in the long run because you end up walking in the wilderness with others like you.  Those who are able to speak their truth without fear of intimidation, with freedom to think differently.  These are people who are able to debate with civility and remain friends.

How do you know if you are a part of a group that walks in the wilderness?  I believe that it means there are no “meetings after the meetings”.  There is no finding that person or small group of people who completely agree with you, knowing that none of you would ever speak up otherwise.  Personally, I’ve never been a part of the wilderness because I learned very early that speaking what you were thinking was not safe.  And despite a lot of growth as I’ve grown older, among certain very vocal people, those who have mastered the art of intellectual intimidation using righteous anger, I completely fold, later beating myself up because I too have thoughts and ideas, they just don’t agree with theirs.

So, what to do?  As Brene says, things like social media are wonderful and awful at the same time.  People use it to intimidate through words, hiding in relative safety because it’s never face to face.  Perhaps just staying from social media is an answer, but it’s fun to put positive things on to share with friends and family.  Maybe the answer is to just stop being a part of life, staying in safety with family and the few friends who love you no matter what, but there’s not much opportunity for growth there.  Safe but boring.  So, the answer is learning how to be vulnerable and speaking my truth in a respectful way, knowing that I could get slammed by someone in the process.  Hard.

The older I get, the more I feel the need to say something about things I feel strongly about.  The way we’re behaving, the way we’re treating each other, all the name calling and intimidation, (basically adult bullying) has got to stop, if not for us, for the generations to follow.  All my kids see is adults behaving like children and there are apparently no consequences great enough to stop the things these so-called “adults” are  doing and saying to each other.  So maybe it’s time for some of us to step into the wilderness.  To stop being afraid to say what we believe in, in all of it’s glorious grayness. To realize that in our vulnerability, we may inspire others to do the same.

I can’t continue to live the way I’m living.  I’m harder on myself for being this way than anyone else could ever be for speaking my mind.  I’m going to try to challenge myself, one step at a time so that eventually, I will make it into the wilderness.