We need to have a talk about safety here.
Have you noticed the Queen Anne's Lace in each version of our Bravely Being logo? For those of you unfamiliar with plant life, Queen Anne's Lace is a delicate, textured wildflower that grew all over my parents' property when I was a kid. And believe it or not, this gorgeous little flower led to a lot of crucial conversations around safety.
It looks harmless enough, right? And it is. It's actually edible. It's beautiful, and there's absolutely nothing about it that could cause harm. In fact, the traditional meaning of this flower is associated with "sanctuary."
There's another plant called Hemlock. It's a delicate, textured wildflower that grew all over my parents' property when I was growing up. It looks so similar to the untrained eye that many people might even mistake the two. One notable difference? Hemlock is violently poisonous. It's the real deal. As a kid, my mom quizzed me on how to identify these two wildflowers and tell them apart. It was an absolute must for a country kid.
As Bravely Being came to life, I spent a great deal of time thinking about the symbolism that I wanted to include in our logo. I wanted something meaningful that required a little extra thought. That's when it occurred to me.
As a therapist who specializes in trauma, I work with many profoundly terrified humans. The symptoms of trauma often manifest in anxiety, dissociation, depression, self-hatred... I could go on and on. But across the board, people who have been through hard stuff have learned in their bodies that the world is not a safe place.
They were given a bouquet of hemlock early on.
Once you've been handed a bouquet of hemlock, even the most sacred and beautiful things look and feel unsafe. Your body is poised and ready for a fight. Strategies develop to keep out all of those delicate, white flowers so the poison is kept at bay.
If you're walking around in your life, and everything looks and feels and smells and tastes like hemlock, it's no surprise you're fighting for your life to keep that Queen Anne's Lace sanctuary at bay. And that's where we come in.
The best way to create a new roadmap for safety is to start again with the body. We want to give you a detailed, comprehensive guidebook. We want to experience life fully, and we want that for you too.
We want you to find sanctuary. We want you to enjoy the beauty of Queen Anne's Lace. We want you to experience what safety feels like, maybe for the first time ever.
So when you look at our logo, know that we've got your back. Here at Bravely Being, we are determined to create an atmosphere of safety and sanctuary where we can listen to our bodies and really hear them.
Let's break the cycle together, friends.
-Beth