Courage

Over the past few weeks, I’ve seen examples of courage that have blown me away.
 
Like millions of us, I watched the fabulous Brene Brown special on Netflix, which reinforced what I believe courage looks like. As Brene so beautifully states, courage starts with showing up and letting yourself be seen. 

I want to share two examples of courage personified that I’ve witnessed over the past few weeks. 

Courage in Self-Discovery
 
As many of you know, our son courageously let himself be seen in a very public way when he came out on social media as transgender on Transvisibility Day. He bravely told us three months ago that he’s struggled with feeling like he wasn’t in the right body for a long time, and he wanted to start the journey of self-discovery with regards to gender identity. He wants to explore this now, not years down the road. Even though Scott and I are incredibly supportive of LGBTQ, I know it still took IMMENSE courage to talk to us about his feelings and wishes. I can say right now, I wouldn't have had the courage to do anything of the sort at his age. To put myself out there like that in order to be my authentic self. 
 
He showed up in a very big way and let himself be seen. He is courage personified and I am inspired by him to continue to practice this level of vulnerability and courage in my own life. 
 
Courage in Diving into the Fear/Unknown
 
I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know a young man who is not only highly intuitive, but a man of great faith. Christian faith. As you can imagine, when he started to experience visions, voices, and dark energy attacks, he was terrified. I know that level of fear because I’ve been there. It happened to me when I first started to understand just how highly intuitive I am (when I was 36) so I hoped I could help him in a way that would bring more peace and understanding into his life. 
 
I’m blown away by the courage he showed just being willing to come talk with me (a total stranger) and share his personal experiences with tears in his eyes. And I’m in awe of the courage he continues to show in truly owning that there is purpose in what he’s experienced and that he has the power to implement changes in thinking that boost his level of self-authority. Ultimately, he now has control over the scary happenings that plagued him for months and he’s learning how to manage his intuition and not be fearful of the God-given power he has within. 
 
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Witnessing both of these beautiful souls crack open their hearts to be who they are meant to be in the world is an honor, to say the least. As we all know, life is messy, complicated, and very uncomfortable at times but if we continue to listen to our intuition, we’ll always be on the right road, no matter what our head (or other people) might be telling us at the time. 
 
For example, I followed my intuition and fought to give the Tedx Talk I knew I was meant to give in Sedona in November. I knew that censoring the talk and taking out bits of my journey in order to please the folks in charge was not what I felt in my heart was the right thing to do so I fought to keep in the parts about working on cold cases with law enforcement and visions coming to me out of nowhere. 
 
Just this past week, I finally heard from TEDx staff in NYC why my talk (that I gave back in November) hadn’t been published yet. (I’m one of three presenters whose talks have not published because of this very thing.) Turns out, they feel my talk violates the content guidelines set by TED. I am still waiting on information regarding exactly what they feel violates the guidelines. Visions? #Metoo? Repression of memories? Talk of abuse?  I’m hoping they will share this information soon. 
 
From what I’ve read, they have the right to put a disclaimer on the talk, publish it only on the local TED website, or ban it all together. There are many TEDx talks that include intuition and one in particular was presented by a professional intuitive medium so it will be interesting to learn exactly what the problem is but I can tell you this—it’s all happening exactly the way it is supposed to happen. I’m no stranger to this type of scenario. It happened with Shark Tank, too. And the outcome was better than I could have imagined. 
 
I’ll keep you all posted but I feel very peaceful about how it’s all unfolding and I will make sure that my talk is published regardless of the decision by TED. Nothing about my journey, nor Noah’s or my young friend I mentioned earlier, has been “comfortable” but maybe it’s not supposed to be. 
 
Maybe we’re supposed to always strive to be exactly who we know we are in our heart and soul, unapologetically and authentically. No matter what society tells us. 
 
So be brave.
Be seen.
Be unapologetically authentic.
 
Be courageous.