I was an unwed pregnant teen at 17 years old and my son was born a month after I turned 18. I learned pretty quickly that life isn’t easy for young, single mothers. I had to quit my job at a shoe factory because I didn’t have daycare. Soon after, I lost my apartment and I was homeless for the first time in my life.

The first night you spend on the street is one of the scariest nights of your life. Then it gets easier, you find regular places to sleep and people to hang around with that you can trust. The unnerving part is that so much of your energy is devoted to safety. It is hard to have the capacity to look for work when you have to spend so much time just looking for food, shelter, and warmth. When you have an infant who is depending on you, the insecurity of meeting basic needs is even greater.

Tomorrow, for the first time in over 30 years, at 49 years old, I will be homeless again. This time it will be because of choice not necessity, yet even so, I stand here on the precipice of being divided by zero again. My stuff has been given away, my apartment cleaned, my car is packed. I turn the keys over at 11 am and for the next year will have no place that to call “mine”, no place to nest or feel safe from the world. It is a scary and daunting place to be. For a long time I have wondered if I can actually do it or if I will cave to the illusion of safety that our houses create. There is only one way to find out…face the fear and do that which scares me most.

Everyone who knows me describes my character as someone who will whine the whole way up the ladder of a high dive, complaining the whole time that I can’t do it. But when I reach the top, I just jump. No fanfare, no explanation, no coaxing required. The process of climbing and complaining is my way of convincing and reassuring myself that the course of action I am on is where I want to be. Once I reach it, if I haven’t turned back, there is only one choice…jump. Tonight I am jumping. Tonight I am facing the fear, telling it hell no, and taking the risk anyway.

During one of the times that I was whining about doing some crazy activity that my friend Matt got me into, I told him how afraid I was. He looked at me with that gleam in his eye and said “feels good doesn’t it?” When I answered “not really”, Matt countered with “Robin, fear is where the fun starts. It is when you are at that edge of out of control that you are most fully alive”. And he was right, it does feel good. It pushes you to the edge of comfort and engages your mind and body in a way that safety never can. It makes all your senses come alive.

If you are stuck in a rut or want to make changes in your life, start with finding something you are afraid of and face it. It doesn’t have to be an adventure sport or even a risky activity. It could be something as simple as trying a new food or learning how to parallel park or even being vulnerable and authentic with your partner. It is something that pushes you out of your comfort, where you feel unsafe. Any activity that makes your heart pound and gives you that amazing sense of accomplishment when you have completed it…go do it. It is the first step to moving forward.

Face the fear because fear is where the fun starts.

The encouraging thing is that every time you meet a situation, though you may think at the time it is an impossibility and you go through the tortures of the damned, once you have met it and lived through it you find that forever after you are freer than you ever were before. If you can live through that you can live through anything. You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you stop to look fear in the face.

You are able to say to yourself, `I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’
The danger lies in refusing to face the fear, in not daring to come to grips with it. If you fail anywhere along the line, it will take away your confidence. You must make yourself succeed every time. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn By Living (1960)

I am getting rid of everything I own.  That fact has been paralyzing to me. Well, not everything, a girl can’t part with her gear…one has to have priorities.  But I am trying to take everything else I have an reduce it to 1 bag of clothes and a bike. This is made harder by training for a summit of Kilimanjaro, that in itself takes a bag a clothes.

While I was going through a closet tonight, I realized how many coats I have.  But the shocking part was how many of them that I haven’t worn in the past 2-3 years.  So why do I still have them?  There are people I see on the street in the winter who are in coats not nearly as warm as these are, yet I am hoarding them in my closet.  Why?  And I would bet that most of you have at least one coat like that too.  So why don’t we have a National Coat Night?  One night where we all take 30 minutes and go through our closets and get all the coats we haven’t worn in 2-3 years and donate them. Then they could either go to citizens of this country who are down or their luck or people from other countries who are not so well off as this one. Everyone deserves to be warm.

Just be sure to check the pockets. I found that I have an affinity for chapstick.  There was  some in at least half of the jackets I have.