Discovering Audacious Love

From as far back into my childhood as I can remember, I was certain that I was born for a purpose other than being just a little girl from Belfast. I had no words to explain this internal knowing to myself, let alone anyone else, so while it was ever present, I never moved my lips to speak of its presence. So it patiently waited for its moment of release.

At the age of ten, that moment came. My sister told a story from a youth camp she had volunteered at, and again without uttered word, I knew what my life work would entail. I was born to be in service of others.

The formal launch of my life in service started when I graduated from Queen’s University Belfast with a master’s degree in social work in 1986. My work took me from the city of my birth to London, Auckland, and Sydney, where I practised as a social worker in child protection and childhood trauma. After many years of work, I decided to write a book about it.

However, as the book took form beneath my keyboard-tapping fingers, I noticed what the book was not. It was not a clinical manual of “how to.” It was not written from a place of certainty to tell people how to practise as a social worker or which technique to use. It has turned out not even to be a book for social workers.

To be truthful, I did not fully know what the content of this book was going to end up being. All I knew was that I was compelled to write it. I could not escape the persuasive heart voice that spoke to me of the words to be written. This voice of compulsion was not one of force or obligation but one of purposeful urging that let me know it would not stop until I wrote.

My own curiosity rapidly took over from this internal advisor to write. I was eager to find out what I would see as my emerging identity revealed itself to me from within the words I wrote. I was surprised to find that the beginning of my social-work identity started in early childhood. I originally sat down to write the first chapter about my days at university and was intrigued to find stories from my childhood flooding my thoughts. They were clear links to some of my professional principles being made to characters of childhood finding their way onto the computer screen. I found a richness of knowledge that lay within my upbringing, a richness that deserves more recognition in my exploration of my personal growth and not just my professional development.

To my initial horror, I realized my heart voice was coaching me to write not a clinical book but more of an autobiographical journey. I told some of my close friends of my trepidation at this discovery; they were fully supportive of the non-professional slant of the book. My further dismay that the initial editors of the book agreed with them seemed to strengthen their belief in the book’s progress from clinical to personal. Therefore, I stopped running from it and agreed with this internal taskmaster to write the book you have in your hands today.

Discovering Audacious Love was started at a point in my life when I was coming through some difficult times. A time when I was learning to embrace myself as someone who, while committed to being part of healing the lives of others, was facing her own need for healing.

Embracing the “wounded healer” in me meant that I saw with renewed clarity the beauty in my own experience that could allow me to use my suffering in service of others. It allowed me to see that the pain and doubt that lay beneath the surface of my outward competence and assuredness was a great source of wisdom, and I could harness it. But more importantly, it shows me that if I could harness it, then everyone could. Not in a way that glorifies suffering or minimizes it but in a way that gives it its rightful place in our human journey, a place of dignity in the face of suffering.

So I wrote with a lessened embarrassment at my own autobiographical content. I wrote with a love that my words could be used to lessen the pain or confusion of anyone who might read them.

I wrote with a growing hope that people who turned the pages would feel that my suffering is the same arising suffering as theirs and they would know they were not alone. If I could ease but one person’s loneliness, then this compulsion to write would make sense.

I wrote with a mounting passion my discovery that joy exists despite pain, and it is accessible to everyone. If I could open up a new dialogue that allowed joy and pain to co-exist with equal honour, then the heart voice that directed me to write was wise indeed.

Within the following pages, you will hear my laughter and my laments. You will see my confusion and my clarity. In order for you to do so, I will show you snapshots of my childhood, relationships with colleagues, challenges in my adulthood, and experiences—painful and joyful and clinical and spiritual. I will lift back the veil of the personal to discuss the professional, and I will deconstruct the professional to find the personal. These are all honoured for what they are: my story. It is a story of deep and passionate love. A story of the discovery of audacious love in my life.