Before realizing this new outlook, the word “fearless” usually alienated me, as it wasn’t how I felt while navigating through the big changes in life.

I came across the word “fearless” constantly in the context of human transformation. People were fearlessly choosing unconventional ways of living, fearlessly making leaps in life, or fearlessly navigating change.

I noticed the constant use of the word and so many other variations. I resonate with making truthful and unconventional choices in my own life, however, I rarely resonated with making those in a “fearless” way.

During the process of all major transformations toward truth, I had to walk myself like a little child through my fear—decluttering it, simplifying it, minimizing it—working with the gradual and gentle process of fearing a little less.

My first journey was when I decided to leave a marriage of 10 years right after my second child was born. Besides the many life-changing questions and fear that the divorce process brought up, there was an additional layer of fear projected by a society that views divorce as a self-destructing, unenduring act of weakness, surrender, and selfishness—rather than that of strength, evolution, and truth.

If I would have followed the expectation of feeling fearless within that level of fear, I might have doubted the path of my truth, and it might have paralyzed me from walking forward.

It was the opposite narrative of acknowledging the fears that comforted and empowered me.

The narrative of being fearless is so strong that when going into a similar transformation years after my divorce—this time relocating to a new country—I found myself needing conscious reminders of how to embrace the dance of fearing a little less again.

I needed to go through a process of remembering to reconnect to the gentleness of the universe, and how it has our best interest in place. I had to remember the capabilities within me—the visible and invisible webs of support—before I could make a leap into the next truthful step. I had to peel away the layers of fear and conditioning until I aligned with my spiritual being. I reached out for a state of calm and maybe fearlessness, but the process felt more so like fearing a little less.

Sometimes I think that the word fearless [in the context of human transformation] has leaked into our vocabulary from a strong masculine paradigm—as if it were borrowed from a loud, bloody Hollywood warrior movie. It has the notion of speed, clarity, and consistency, which, in so many cases, does not at all describe the process of a deeper transformation of the soul.

The word fearless alienates us from how we’re feeling on our truthful path, and the many quotes and expressions floating around make us feel less equipped in navigating the process.

Our transformation is a fearless act in its totality, but the path to it might be filled with little spirals of fearing a little less.

Yours truly,

a greatly fearful fellow human doing some seriously fearless sh*t