Every so often, I want to use this space to share about a book that may not necessarily be written with a military audience in mind, but offers practical insights that can apply to the nuances that military members and spouses certainly face.
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I want to recommend Brene’ Brown’s new release Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone.
The entire book is based on Brown’s social science research about the idea of of fitting in, pretending, and making other people around us feel comfortable. She asserts that there are four practices of true belonging that require us to “be vulnerable, get uncomfortable, and learn how to be with people without sacrificing who we are and what we value.”
- People Are Hard to Hate Close Up. Move In.
- Speak truth to BS. Be Civil.
- Hold Hands. With Strangers.
- Strong Back. Soft Front. Wild Heart.
That’s the stuff you will read on the book jacket of Brown’s book. Here’s the book’s most beautiful and meaningful quote that struck me; it reminds me of the exact idea of what Dependent Diaries is all about.
“Art has the power to render sorrow beautiful, make loneliness a shared experience, and transform despair into hope. Only art can take the holler of a returning soldier and turn it into a shared expression and a deep, collective experience. Music, like all art, gives pain and our most wrenching emotions voice, language, and form, so it can be recognized and shared. The magic of the high lonesome sound is the magic of all art: the ability to both capture our pain and deliver us from it at the same time.”
She goes on to say,
“…When we hear someone else sing about the jagged edges of heartache or the unspeakable nature of grief, we immediately know we’re not the only ones in pain. The transformative power of art is in this sharing…It’s the sharing of art that whispers, ‘You’re not alone.'”
Brown’s book gives evidence and practical steps for finding our way back to ourselves, but this theme of the beauty of our shared experiences is what resonated with me the most.
Dependent Diaries would love to hear from you. How do you find and make connections to other military spouses? Does this come easily and naturally to you? How do you overcome what Brown calls “that lonely feeling” in a life of constant change?
Dependent Diaries 