Book Review: "Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alo

You are only free when you realize you belong no place – you belong every place – no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great. –Maya Angelou

It was a colleague of mine who introduced me to Brene’s first book, “The gifts of imperfection”. She’s gone on to write many other books since then, and her newest one, “Braving the Wilderness” really stands out. We all want to belong, to find our place in the world. What is so interesting is to truly belong Brene explains that we need to be true to ourselves. She challenges the beliefs that many of us have of what it means to belong and be part of a group and the impact that social media and “common enemy closeness” is having on our society. She sums it up well when she explains in her book that “True belonging doesn’t require us to change who we are. It requires us to be who we are”. When we show up as ourselves, that’s when we belong. When we try to fit in and blend in, we can lose ourselves in the process and then we don’t belong to ourselves anywhere, which is key for true belonging in this world. It takes real courage to be yourself, or to disagree with the crowd, to stand out as different.

Through her grounded theory research, she set off to understand what the process, practice of approach that men and women who had developed a sense of true belonging had in common. She also wanted to understand what it takes to get to a place in our lives where we belong nowhere and everywhere – where belonging is in our heart and not a reward for “perfecting, pleasing, providing and pretending” or something that others can hold hostage or take away. What she discovered was pretty intruiging.

She explains the four elements of true belonging that she’s come up with, each one of them making sense and putting together the pieces of a puzzle on what it means to be human and authentic to yourself and others. We make judgements about people we don’t even know because of their affiliations but the truth is in getting to know someone truly, up close and personal, people are harder to hate up close, when you get to know them and their lives, like that neighbor of yours who may have different political views but whom you’ve gotten to know over the years and who always comes over with fresh cherry tomatoes from her garden. Speaking the truth also helps us to be true to ourselves and develop an honest relationship with someone – if a friend says something that we don’t agree with, saying something instead of agreeing or ignoring something that doesn’t sound right to us will help us stay true to our values, but it’s important to be civic, not aggressive, in how we disagree.

Brene explains that “[w]omen and men with the strongest true belonging practices maintain their belief in inexitricable connection by engaging in moments of collective joy and pain with strangers” (p.93). We often want to avoid the pain, but it helps us to show up and be there, as much for the joy as for the pain, with both those we love and those we are meeting for the first time. It’s like showing up at a funeral when a friend has lost someone who is important to them. She talks about “glimpses of human connection”.

This book is a worthwhile read. It will change the way you look at the world and the desire we all have to find our place.