When I write about me I don’t. I write with the knowing that many others feel as I feel, move as I move through the days of this and that, of should I or should I absolutely not, and if I go for the absolutely not, what then? In the days of change, we all know the insecurity of that question, the wobbly boards we navigate to what we hope is safe ground. It might take weeks, months, years. It might be a decision to change from a job we hate, or a relationship we have been unhappy in for years. It might be the death of a longtime partner. The bullet ricochet of that one is something else and I will tell you why. You think you can manage, you believe you will suddenly become who you were before. But this is a lie. As is the belief in the transcode of such a conversion. (From verb to noun, apologies grammar buffs)for nothing happens easy. The first decision to step out into the heretofore unknown, even if observed in others’ journeys, is massively brave. You think there is a cliff and you see your foot out there in space. The fall? Is a killing one for sure. But, but and but again, once you let go, once you give up, wave the white flag and surrender, you look back down again and chuckle. This cliff is but a fault line, a nothing, a thing you could have leapt across as a toddler. You step out. You don’t fall at all. Even you could never fall through such a tiny skint in the landscape of your life. Remember that.

I have watched all of my children on that cusp and, because I recognise it so well, I just said, Go. Step out. Let go. Wave the white flag. Surrender to your imagined fears for they will not follow you. They are imagined and they are nothing but whispers in the dust of your past the moment you take that first step. And the surrender is pivotal. We resist our fears, let them consume us, guide us. T’is a mistake. Another mistake is to deny our fears, our very real fears. We might fear enclosed spaces. We might fear patriarchal domination. We might fear matriarchal domination. The two latter will come back to bite us in the workplace, in relationships, in new friendships or of being suddenly and terminally alone. We might fear spiders or open spaces or crowds or travel or so many other things. All of these and more are real and need to be respected. There may well be a psychological explanation for our fears but that doesn’t stop the fearing of them. Logic does not help. We know the logic. The thing is to say YES, I fear this!

Thus, as a fearing one, I have learned the power of giving up to my fear, of waving the white flag, of saying Yes, I fear you. And what that means to me is this. I speak it out, not to others but to myself. I claim it, this fear, I acknowledge it, I affirm it. I say, hallo, in you come. I have fought you for so long and I am weary of the fight. So we talk. And, when the time is right and I decide to wave the white flag, I find a turning. It is as if I have just made friends with a long term enemy who was never an enemy at all, just one who was challenging me in order for me to move on.

So in conclusion. Giving up is not giving in. And there was me thinking they were conjoined against me.