I never thought of myself as courageous (especially with courage initially bringing up the image for me of someone riding into battle, sword outstretched…), but has become a word that I keep circling back to again and again.  Seeing how I want AND CAN be courageous in how I live my life.

Courage comes from the Old French word curage, which draws from the word cuer, meaning heart. In the past courage meant ‘To speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart’. And Clarissa Pinkola Estes author of ‘Women who Run with the Wolves’ writes that ‘Courage means to follow the heart’.

In this world it takes courage to open our hearts, and to feel what sits there, and I have found it hard to ‘follow my heart’ or to ‘open my heart’.

Opening my heart

My physical heart was born not working as others did. I have a small hole in the wall that separates the heart’s lower chambers and allows blood to pass from the left to the right side of the heart. My heart needs to work extra hard to do its job. I needed more sleep as a child (and still do), get cold hands and feet easily and when you listen to it, it sounds different, with a wha-whoosh sound. I had to mention it on medical forms and have had many visits to specialists over the years as I hit different milestones. All the discussions around my heart were about what I needed to be careful of to protect it. Always reminding me that there was something not quite right.

Alongside this physical protection I have also emotionally protected it. Putting up shields and barriers to give love and also receive love.

It felt more comfortable and safer to be in my head. I was immersed in family, faith and then work environments which revered head logic. I didn’t feel like I could trust my body (which was exacerbated by epilepsy in my late teens which I felt I had no control over), and in the process I often didn’t listen to my body, my heart and what it needed.

Slowly I have been taking chinks out of the shields and armor over my heart. Allowing myself to be vulnerable. To feel. To open up to others. To receive.

Qoya has been a huge part of my journey of connecting to my heart space. To physically open the front of my heart, and the back of my heart in a class. Feeling my heart as a speaker as I connect to the music, and allow my heart/body to lead me. Opening my heart to others and allow myself to be seen by another.

It feels so expansive and vulnerable, as my heart space energetically feels like a barometer for what is tender and real in my life. 

There is so much that I don’t want to see. That I wish didn’t happen, hadn’t happened, won’t be likely to happen again.

But I am learning that courage is seeing it, and still taking that step forward. To do the small thing or the big thing. To stay in the world, in whatever capacity I have.

It is a dance of seeing and being with it, while figuring out boundaries and the energy I have to give in the moment.

Heartfelt participation in life

The magnificent David Whyte whose work I discovered last year (and I just realised I quoted in last weeks email too!) says in his book Consolations – The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words

“Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work, a future. To be courageous is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences. To be courageous is to seat our feelings deep in the body and in the world: to live up to and into the necessities of relationships that often already exist, with a person, a future, a possibility in society, or with an unknown that begs us on and has always begged us on. To be courageous is to stay close to the way we are made”.

Right now I am feeling that something unknown is begging me on to be more. To be in heartfelt participation with life, and to live up to the question that my children may ask ‘Mum, what did you do to change the climate emergency?’. I know I don’t necessarily have to be the one who leads the charge, but being courageous asks me to feel, listen to the voice which visions a different way of living, and speak and act from my heart and soul.

It feels vulnerable to open myself up to tell others what is in my heart.
To share from a place of depth and emotion.
To move from my head into my heart.
To ask the questions that I feel in my body.
But this is what I am signing up for.

How is your heart doing at this very moment?

I learn from Omid Safi from the OnBeing blog that ‘in many Muslim cultures, when you want to ask them how they’re doing, you ask: in Arabic, Kayf haal-ik? or, in Persian, Haal-e shomaa chetoreh? How is your haal?
What is this haal that you inquire about? It is the transient state of one’s heart. In reality, we ask, “How is your heart doing at this very moment, at this breath?”’

Maybe this is the question we should be asking each day of those around us, and truly listening to the response.

How is your heart doing in this moment?

With your hand on your heart, connect in and listen.

What comes up?

I would love to know, and am also here to support you in courageously stepping forward with what is calling you.