Girls just want adventure...and jewelry! When I was leading backcountry trips, I found myself longing for jewelry that I could wear on expeditions and journeys abroad: jewelry that could withstand rapids and rock climbing....but that would still traipse through Tuscany or go dancing with me Buenos Aires. I wanted sturdy yet sexy. Simple yet sophisticated. Delicate...yet powerful as the women wearing it. I set about designing a line of jewelry for women like me—adventuresome women who want to accessorize without compromising FUNction, fashion…..or the environment. www.bronwenonline.com
Seven weeks ago, I woke one morning with severe vertigo. Not just your everyday run of the mill morning dizzy spell. Full blown vertigo. Violent spinning. No up, no down. No gravity. Simultaneously falling and whirling. Lots of vomiting. In short, no reference point whatsoever. Disorientation at it's finest. At one point, I literally found myself asking.....who the hell is this Bronwen character anyway?!
It was the most painfully incapacitating three days of my life and I hope to never experience it again. Talk about cramping my style!!! I'm a horrible candidate for incapacitation. I'm pleased to report that I am on the mend and only now get "dizzy" occasionally, which I've learned is normal following a bout of severe vertigo. Oddly, I've come out of the entire experience contemplating......pretty much everything I've ever learned from society.
When we step out of our normal world and leave behind us all the usual barriers and prejudices, we tend to become more adventurous.
Sometimes when I travel, I purposefully get lost. Sometimes I end up in a bummer place and get hungry and grumpy and the whole getting lost thing kinda sucks. But more often than not, I uncover a place or a person or a thought that becomes very important in my life. Allowing ourselves to get lost......the adventure takes on a life of its own.
The same is true for our THINKING. The more adventurous we become with our thinking, the more opportunities exist to uncover something that you actually believe at your very core. I mean believe with your heart and your body and your mind. Not because everyone else says they believe it or a book tells you to believe it. But because it makes sense and feels right to YOU in your gut (or as my 3 year old niece, Wyatt, calls it your "gutlet"). We all want to feel good in our gutlets, right?
I'm not saying that severe vertigo is any great ride or anything like that. But I am saying that sometimes we need to be tipped upside down and whirled around, spun wildly, and perhaps even vomit a few times god forbid, to even question our own thinking and believing.
Find Your Rhythm Lifestyle...a shared passion for physical recreation in the outdoors, relentless world travel, mental/emotional fitness (this means an equal balance of employing our brains and our hearts as guides) and general health-promoting habits. We're talking about being free in our hearts so we can:
find the rhythm in life that feels most authentic and meaningful to us
express this authentic rhythm to the world---it's what nature intended
My authentic rhythm happens to be one of constant CHANGE. I have a self-proclaimed, perpetual case of wanderlust. Just the mere mention of a new adventure or distant journey and I immediately perk up. My husband lures me to our more mundane tasks by attaching the promise of an adventure to get me interested. Instead of, "C'mon Bron, we need to go grocery shopping," he'll wisely say, "Hey Bron, we need groceries badly and there is a new Whole Foods in Oakland. We'll take the bikes and ride through a really seedy area of town to get there..it'll be a real adventure!" And I'm already clamoring to slip into my biking shorts. It's really that easy.
I am painfully paralyzed by predictability; I thoroughly thrive in change. What am I gonna do? It's my rhythm. It's what makes me feel most alive---the best version of Bronwen possible. I'm learning to love it.
It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.
It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy mine or your own. if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day, and if you can source your own life from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon,“Yes.”
It doesn't interest me to know where you live, or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself, and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
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