Word Alchemy – Courage

Photo: The Boulder Bank or Te Pokohiwi is a 13 kilometre long, naturally formed landform in Nelson, New Zealand.
The rocks of the boulder bank are letters and words.  Every day with changing tide, sea mood, and energy,  they move and form different patterns and placements; making different sounds, meanings, and effects. You are the sea.

Word Alchemy  –  Courage

When I was writing Ride and was asked; ‘what do you do?’  I would answer that I was writing a book about my Son’s departure by suicide. People would often respond by saying; ‘Wow, that takes some courage or you must be so courageous’.  Once Ride was written, and then in print, and I was asked the same question and I would give the slightly different answer that I had just published a book about my Son’s departure by suicide, and again, people would give the same answer about me being courageous.
Now when people have read Ride, they will often, once again, refer to my courage.  By this time, they have learned that Ride is multi-layered and suicide is but one layer.

That’s had me pondering the word courage for a few months now, what it truly means and how it relates to me writing Ride.

When one searches the meaning of the word courage there is posturing about bravery and strength, there is information on how to ‘teach’ courage and there is information about three forms of courage (in the workplace) TRY Courage, TRUST Courage, and TELL Courage.

I can relate: to the TRY (as during the whole project of Ride I felt like I ‘was trying:’ ‘to write’, ‘then print’, ‘then market’) to the TRUST; as I really had to trust the process. To the TELL; finding the resolve to tell my story was huge … so maybe that was the bravery often referred to in the definition of courage?

I felt there was a lot more to the word; more specifically, I couldn’t relate to having written Ride as I was ‘courageous’, so I played with it.

I often do this with words when I am working out how I really feel about them and what they mean to me and why.  One of the first things I will do is make other words out of the word.

The words I ‘found’ in the word courage were;

Care, Grace, Rage, Our, Roar, Race, Rouge, Ace, Cage, Rag, Age, Oar

There will be more, but these are the ones that jumped out at me.

Then I took those few words and I made them into a collection to describe my story of Ride that will probably have little relevance to anyone but me at this point,  but stay with me 🙂

Whatever age
We can be in a cage
We may rage, we may roar
We may use our rouge oar to race, to ace, to rag
When all we need is care and grace

Then I randomly found that the word courage comes from the Old French root meaning Heart.

Then I remembered a saying I had heard sometime, someplace:

Courage is (simply) Love in Action

And Boom that was it…

What people were labelling as courage was/is essentially my LOVE for me, my Son, humanity, the earth, my coming from a heart-centered place to share my story with anyone while not fully knowing why.

Why am I saying this?

Because now, more than ever we must, all, as individuals, be courageous: LOVE.

Courage …

All is choice, and your power is in your ability to choose your response or action at any given moment.
BE super honest with yourself about everything. This is maybe a foreign idea to some … Practice honesty.
Know yourself enough to ask yourself – am I operating with my highest integrity?
Know that you playing small doesn’t serve anyone.
BEing at peace doesn’t mean you won’t use your own voice.
Know to care and care to know.
One has to care enough to be educated and educated enough to care.
Educate so you care and care so you educate.
Know the radical difference between The Love of Power and The Power of Love.
Know self-responsibility is a joy. Expand into it and then expand more.
The joy expands as the self-responsibility expands.
This is maybe a foreign idea to some … Especially if self-responsibility is a new thing… Practice it.
Self-responsibility equals personal power.
Personal power equals connectedness.
Connectedness equals love.
Everything has its own vibrational frequency – feel it, recognise, respond to it and then choose the vibration you want.

Bravery …

Now to use one of those buzz words the dictionary uses to describe courage:
Love (Be brave) enough to speak your truth and if you don’t know your truth – Love (Be brave) enough to look for it – dig for it if you need to (find your voice).
Your truth is important. Don’t let it sleep any longer.
Love (Be brave) enough to change, to let go that which does not serve you.
Be fucking honest with yourself about it.
You’re not perfect, but you actually are,  so become more perfect; more of who you really are.
Question yourself, challenge yourself .. every dam glorious day.
Be happy. Be outrageous. Be present. Be a mess. Be.

Have the: self-love, self-responsibility, self-honesty  (courage) to stand in your flame and be in your own power and shine like the amazing star child you are.

Step into your knowing in care and grace.

Next blog: The absolute difference between knowing and beliefs and how stepping into your knowing is creative, expansive, and giving and beliefs are somewhat pointless, destructive, and disruptive.