The Daring Way™ and Rising Strong™ curricula were designed for work with individuals, couples, families, teens, groups, work teams, and organizational leaders. It can be facilitated for women and men (or co-ed) in clinical, private, educational, and professional settings. No matter the format, these processes offer insights and promise a deeply transformational experience.
As human beings we’re hardwired for connection. One of the tragic ironies of modern life is that so many of us feel isolated from each other by the very feelings we have in common: including a fear of failure and a sense of not being enough.
Connection is as much of a fundamental need of ours as food and shelter, yet connection can also feel vulnerable. In a world that wants us to be anything but ourselves, how do we safeguard our authenticity, show up bravely, and enjoy the messy, imperfect and beautiful journey of our life? How do we step fully and confidently into our uniqueness and claim our worthiness? How do we belong to ourselves?
As a Certified Daring Way™ Facilitator, I am honoured to be able to lead individuals through Dr. Brené Brown’s powerful and ground-breaking work on shame resilience, vulnerability, and pathways to achieve wholehearted living.
At our 3-day Daring Greatly™ retreats, we nourish our spirits and bodies as we explore Brené’s highly experiential methodology reflecting her research and theory in these areas. In many ways, our group represents a microcosm for the macrocosm, providing a safe container to practice skills that we will later take into every area of our inner and outer worlds.
In small group sessions, we will:
The Daring Way Workshop I completed with Anita was one of the most profound experiences in my life. I was able to understand just how much shame had handicapped me in my life; and, the resulting anxiety that the shame produced is now no longer running the show. The manner in which Anita worked individually with each participant – all within the context of a group process – was astonishing to witness, and more so, absolutely incredible to participate in. This is indeed a gifted practitioner – one of the best I have encountered in the field!
The hardest part of the Daring Way Retreat was committing to going. I knew it would be transformative work, but not without a little trudging through the mud first, which I feared. However, it was one of the most honest, trusting, and comfortable places to dig deep into my truth. Being in a group setting was magical because not only was I learning to be authentic with others, but by witnessing the transformation in others, I no longer felt alone in my struggles. It appears that Anita has the heart of a child – never broken or scarred – because she loves so fully and openly. No prerequisites needed for this retreat ~ just a desire to grow, and understand love and connection a little better.
The Daring Way experience has changed my life! I feel like I can finally breathe and live completely and wholeheartedly. I feel that some of my deepest, darkest struggles finally have language around them and I now have tools to work through them. I feel I can finally walk in the light of who I am!
The content of this workshop is a must for anyone interested in fully living and showing up in the world. Anita leads from the heart and holds a very safe and sacred space for this sort of work to be done. She works from excellence, and love is infused in all she does. The space is sacred, allowing deep transformation of all participants.
I entered into the workshop space with a curious mind and left with much clearer understanding of the vocabulary, which resulted in a few massive realizations. When the workshop ended, the unfolding did not stop! As I continued doing the work, I found myself connecting more dots and things kept shifting quite quickly. If you have the desire to understand yourself better so you can make a change, or make a shift to living with more courage, then I highly recommend you attend the Daring Way workshop. It will transform you!
If we care enough and dare enough, we will experience disappointment, heartbreak and failure. Rising Strong™ is a unique hands-on learning experience, designed to have us own our stories of struggle, reckon with emotion, and rumble with the challenges that come with living an authentic and wholehearted life, all in service of writing our own daring endings!
How many times a day do you make up a story about something hard that just happened in your interaction with another person? And then believe it to be the truth? And then run with that story, sharing it with others as THE TRUTH?
Our brain is wired for one thing, and one thing only ~ SURVIVAL! When something hard happens, our brain senses our emotions and wants to know what just happened. Most times, while parts of the story might be true, most likely they’re not accurate. And our brain is not interested in accuracy. Why? Because the primary function of our stories is to protect and disengage us from our hard emotions.
Most of us can only name three emotions: mad, sad, glad. Rising Strong™ is a powerful 3-step process that helps make sense of the 40+ emotions that we experience as human beings, and how they’re related to our thoughts and our behaviour. Once we have increased emotional literacy, we can start to understand the disempowering effects of those first stories we make up to self-protect and how they get in the way of our connection with others, both in our personal and our professional worlds. We learn how we’ve been offloading hurt onto others, and how deciding to retire some of those story lines is key to taking the pen back so we can write our own ending to our story.
This workshop has really helped me see past my own BS to the truer me and will help me find a path to building real connections in my personal life. I think I can put up positive boundaries now, without closing people out or oversharing. I now have better tools to recognize my own self-worth and not shrink before others, or over-perform to compensate. I always liked myself – but now I know my shame does not define me. Anita was intuitive and patient and so very informed that I can’t imagine a better workshop experience!
The curriculum of Rising Strong will help shape an emotionally aware world. I highly recommend it for educators and parents who desire meaningful conversations, connections, and seek compassion in the children of our world. This workshop has given me the tools to rely on so I can show up braver, more vulnerable and strong. I feel more empowered to identify triggers and stories so I can create deeper connection with people rather than frequently encounter explosive endings. This work has helped me to own my stories and I can take back my life.
The Daring Way stripped the hurt, pain and shame from inside, exposing me to what I had held in for so long. Rising strong helped me build myself up with love, grace and dignity. The support and warmth from the group is something I will never forget.
In addition to leading 3-Day weekend retreats, I also offer workshops of varying length and content in The Daring Way™ and Rising Strong™ processes. Based on these curricula, I am happy to design half-day or full-day experiential learning workshops for your group or organization.
Listening to shame | Brené Brown Ted Talk on Shame
Brené Brown: the Call to Courage | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflix Netflix Film
The answer is a resounding “YES”! Wholehearted people have learned strategies to deal with the hard events and emotions of life without closing down their hearts.
When we can get real with struggle, it means we can get real with anything!
The toughest moments in life rarely feel like gifts. Whether it’s losing a job, struggling through a floundering relationship, or witnessing the death of a loved one, experiences that bring us to our knees tend to trigger our defenses, not our wisdom.
By confronting our scarier emotions — vulnerability, fear, and shame — we can learn to lead a more “wholehearted” life.
Wholeheartedness is a learned skill that we can all choose to cultivate in ourselves. It simply requires us to practice the techniques that are designed to boost our self-worth and self-awareness.
The 10 Guideposts are the basic tenets to Wholehearted Living. They are about building shame resilience, believing in our own worthiness, and giving ourselves permission to be vulnerable AND strong in our connections. Each Guidepost is a practice in its own right — a chance to develop a skill or a trait that supports living wholeheartedly.
Are you ready to finally step into the arena of authenticity & worthiness?
Sign up today and join a tribe of like-minded Darers on this 10-month Guidepost exploration program, where we will navigate through one Guidepost a month, diving deep into what’s needed to get it “into our bones”.
As this work is not limited to past participants of Daring Greatly™ & Rising Strong™ workshops, please feel free to invite family, friends and colleagues who may be interested in joining you on this journey.
For next in-person and online programs, see Events page.
For corporate and customized programs, please contact me.
To sign up, or have your questions answered, please contact me directly.