The Courage to Be Yourself. Sue Patton Thoele

      INTRODUCTION TO THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

      SHARING THE JOURNEY

      My heart swells with gratitude as I revisit The Courage to Be Yourself, to revise and update it for this Tenth Anniversary Edition. I'm grateful for all the people who from the very beginning encouraged me to write when I didn't have a clue how to begin or the confidence to believe that I had anything worthwhile to say. And most of all I'm grateful to the women who have read the book and, in doing so, have given it a life of its own.

      Receiving letters and talking with these readers has been a continual and invaluable reminder to me that no matter how diverse we may seem, women share very similar journeys. In essence, we want and need to gather the courage to be whom we were born to be.

      As is often the case, we teach what we most need to learn, and that was certainly true for me in writing The Courage to Be Yourself. The book emerged from my own struggles with fear, feelings of limitation, and the unrelenting criticism I heaped upon myself. Because I needed to practice the art of loving and being myself, this book was born. But it has survived and thrived because of you, the readers. Thank you from the depths of my heart!

      Many of the women who first read the book are now mothers and grandmothers, and it's my hope and prayer that this revised edition will become a legacy they will want to pass on to their daughters and granddaughters.

      The idea of writing The Courage to Be Yourself first occurred to me in the small groups and seminars that I and a dear friend, Bonnie Hampton, led for several years. As we explored women's issues— which included hopes, dreams, frustrations, fantasies, and fears—I was struck by the fact that whether married or single, stay-at-home moms or career women, old or young, the women in the groups struggled with similar anxieties and were saddled with comparable limiting beliefs. Amid both laughter and anguish, we helped each other transform common fears into the courage to express our authentic selves. Bonnie's and my goal was to provide simple but powerful tools for helping ourselves and participants enhance self-esteem and tap into our elusive but ever-present core of emotional strength.

      I'm hoping the true stories and examples shared in The Courage to Be Yourself will act as a group experience for you to help you overcome any tendency you may have to undervalue yourself and to encourage you, instead, to fully love and appreciate how wonderful you really are. Sharing our journey with other women can uphold and sustain us as we find the courage to be uniquely ourselves and realize that emotional strength and self-esteem are, in fact, our birthright, our privilege, and our responsibility.

      PART ONE

      FINDING THE COURAGE TO BE YOURSELF

      CHAPTER ONE

      AN EXPANDED VISION OF SELF

      I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming. . . . This all sounds very strenuous and serious. But now that I have wrestled with it, it's no longer so. I feel happy—deep down. All is well.

       KATHERINE MANSFIELD (LAST JOURNAL ENTRY)

      Because we have learned so much, finding the courage to be ourselves may be easier for some of us now than it was fifteen years ago when I began writing the first edition of this book. Easier because many women are reveling in a greater sense of personal freedom and embracing a more expansive vision of themselves. While we can still fall prey to fears and beliefs that limit us, we have also become more psychologically aware and therefore better able to understand, move through, and overcome challenging feelings and circumstances.

      That's the good news. The flip side is that finding and sustaining the courage to be ourselves continue to be a challenge for many women, myself included. Why is it still so darn hard? One of the main reasons is that many of us were weaned on subtle and not-sosubtle innuendos regarding a “woman's role” and, as a result, were well trained to put ourselves last, if at all. Old, familiar habits and expectations such as these are not easily or quickly changed. Another deterrent to authenticity is the seemingly endless and ever expanding demands upon us. Over-commitment robs us of the time, energy, and interest necessary to ponder who we are

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