Within a space of 2 weeks it is my birthday, Be Braver incorporation date, Emmeline Pankhurst’s Birthday & the date I got married (a healthy reminder that we all make mistakes but that they don’t define us).
I do so love that in choosing to take the name Pankhurst after I divorced, turns out, the day after my actual wedding date is Emmeline’s birthday. Life gives & takes in equal measure.
So as I approach 45 & Be Braver approaches its third year, I reflect on having left a career I had mapped out & dedicated myself to from the age of 17.
On how I set off, alone, aged 42 as a single parent into the unknown to create & build something no-one else had done before. Something that I believed in. Something so far removed from what I did before but so much very more me.
I do now think that what I have done is remarkably special, by anyone’s standard actually although it’s mostly because of the generous feedback so many of my clients give me.
I feel happy to say that yes, I am proud of where Be Braver is 3 years in. Through a pandemic & with all that we have achieved.
Mostly the amazing impact & results we’ve created for those we’ve worked with. Pride because the success is ours in the Be Braver Collective. We are a bravewashed pack. We share the pride because we are a pride. Of lionesses. Habituating the Be Braver practice.
Pride because the Be Braver Institute has Clients beyond my wildest dreams.
What do I see when I look back on the 45 years? In my own life story so far? Mostly that my own pain & trauma became my salvation. I give thanks for my insatiable curiosity for feminism & psychology.
To finding the solution to understanding how to best experience being me. Choosing courage. Learning to Be Braver.
A transformation. Not to something different. To who I was supposed to be before all the other stuff had started to suffocate me.
I uncovered a woman so assured, confident, connected & courageous that I knew there must be many more like me.
Capable yet in need of the finding the same. Finding how to experience being, more ambitiously, courageously & truthfully. With purpose, less stress & anxiety & more fun.
I saw that in order make a better impact in the world, our organisations & communities - to find the solutions we need to create, innovate & grow – we need the voices, ideas & contributions of the most courageous of us.
Those who have faced bias, discrimination & adversity in their lives. The fighters who have been brought to their knees & are still showing up every day.
Women especially, but no (yawn) not exclusively, suffer all sorts of abuse & trauma. From being young girls into & throughout adulthood. How we experience existing in the world as adults, in all environments, becomes shaped by that. Be it work, relationships, socialising, health & our general well being.
What we expect of & deserve for ourselves can be hard to hear & see amidst the noise of societal expectations & the shadows of trauma. Yet we have power & strength we might not always see.
So I decided to create an applied practical framework, mindset & programme to enable others to do the same as I had done. To find a better way, to be able to experience being, the way you deserve to. With courage, conviction, commitment & joy. To Be Braver.
What sits in academic papers, books, therapist rooms, leadership research, activist workshops now lives as a practice in the lives of countless women (& men) that have learned to become Be Braver practitioners.
For it is a practice, because life is a learning journey. Change is constant, adversity & opportunity meet us throughout our lives & careers in equal measure & we need to be embrace both. Fully & whole heartedly.
We have all been brave. We were all born brave. And we can all learn to be braver again.
Birth itself is the greatest act of courage & bravery. Your mother was a woman of courage. Being a woman is courage and no-one will ever convince me that women aren’t the very definition of courage which is a good job given its my Phd Thesis.
As critical as I am of my own writing, as I have said to myself each step along this Be Braver journey so far, if it resonates with just one person, gives hope & offers a solution to change & a better way to one person’s life, business or career. Then the effort will have been all worth it.