These thoughts for the Fearlessness Movement on-line community come from having grown and benefited from the lived community learning and personal liberation experience of the In Search of Fearlessness Center and Research Institute (ISOF) in Calgary Alberta from 1991 – 2000. Followed by living into more theoretical and arts-based research with Michael, as both he and I pursued doctoral research at a higher education institute (The University of British Columbia) from 1999 – 2008 and more deeply researched our understandings and experiences of fear, desire, community and love. Living and teaching in the United States since 2008, at a State University in an economically poor area, and taking on dual citizenship as a Canadian American I find myself living in the midst of a community of fear. A community that does not have a perspective or language to see outside of its situated fear-based life style and habits. I do not like living in this way and yet I do not think there is an escape from it. There is only living with it and working to not feed and extend its grasp further.
I have had the opportunity to take a leadership role in my university as the Director of a Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies program. In my job interview I made a commitment to create a sane interdisciplinary space for students, faculty, staff and any others that may connect with the program. I have been able to create a space that has qualities of the first ISOF supported by my dissertation findings of restoration being as significant as transformation in living a life of love and compassion for oneself, the community and the more than human world. This is not easy work to do within an institution, yet I know the struggles of developing and carrying out this work independently. It is my desire that the Fearlessness Movement community on Ning be a space for people to share their successes and struggles in doing this worldwork. Offering and sharing practices that support, critically think through and surprise.
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