Brita Fernandez Schmidt - Fears to Fierce: A Woman’s Guide to Owning Her Power

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Driven by her purpose, Brita believes that every woman has a fierce power to fulfil her dreams. She coaches women to help them transform their lives by awakening and acting on the power they have within. Brita is an advocate and promoter of womens power, womens rights and equality. She frequently writes and speaks publicly about the challenges women face all over the world in the context of poverty and conflict.

Originally from Germany, Brita went to school in Venezuela and throughout her career has worked with women from many countries around the world. She now lives in the UK with her husband, two daughters and two dogs.

Brita currently serves as the Executive Director of Women for Women International UK and is the Senior Vice President for Europe and External Relations globally. She co-founded Women for Women International in Germany in 2018.

Fears to Fierce is her first book, it is personal and the views represented in the book do not necessarily reflect the views of the organisations she works for.

To Emma and Sara.

May you follow your fierce.

We are all called at some point in our lives to answer some basic questions. How should we live? What are we here for? What is our purpose? What makes a meaningful life. Not all of us are brave enough to answer that call. But, those of us who do decide to make that journey of discovery need companions and a guide.

We first came across Brita through her incredible work for the charity Women for Women International. At the time we had just finished writing our own guide for women seeking purpose WE: A Manifesto for Women Everywhere and were researching charities that supported women for the resources section of our book. We quickly found ourselves in awe of Women for Women Internationals transformative work with women in conflict zones around the world. And, equally inspired by Brita, its fearless, fierce leader, who had an inner light and energy that it is impossible not to be captivated and motivated by.

We have witnessed Britas courage and leadership, her ability to light up a room and win support for some of the most vulnerable women on the planet. Three years on it is an honour and a privilege to write the foreword to her guide which were sure will touch the lives of many women.

Brita generously lays out her own journey, the role of feminism and the vital importance for humanity of inspiration. She weaves her experiences and wisdom in and out of the equally inspiring stories of women she has met along the way. She shares the actions and techniques that have helped her connect with her truth, her passion and her purpose.

Fears to Fierce is a wonderful, inspiring book for women seeking to find their purpose. She coins the term Fierce to describe that light within us that burns more brightly the more inspired we are and the more connected we are to our inner truth. It is not for the fearful, but as Brita writes, and we both know from our own inner work, everything you need is already within you.

We wish you luck as you embark on finding your fierce the force that will lead you to live fully and help to transform the world.

Gillian Anderson and Jennifer Nadel, authors of We: A Manifesto for Women Everywhere.

Lifes a journey not a destination.

Lynn H. Hough

If I could choose a superpower, it would be the power to inspire. When Im inspired, I feel I can move mountains, overcome fears and follow my dreams. I feel a surge of energy that speaks to the very essence of who I am. I call this my fierce. When something inspires me, it is my fierce that responds. I call it my fierce because when I follow it, I allow my true power to shine without holding back. Fierce also implies feral wildness, something that is not tainted or touched by the norms that are learned and govern our everyday lives.

I want you to feel like that, too.

Sometimes, our surroundings can lead us to lose touch with our fierce and be overcome by fear. As we are taught societal norms and expectations from an early age, we also learn to fear what will happen if we dont abide by these conventions. And feeling fear stops us being true to our fierce, because our fierce most probably doesnt make us feel normal. We instinctively know that nurturing our fierce will mean departing from the norm. And that means putting ourselves on the outside, where we fear we will be alone and not accepted or loved.

Heres the thing I believe the majority of us feel like this. I am yet to meet someone who feels normal. We all have our own fierce and we are all scared to be fully true to it, because it will mean being different. But if we allow ourselves to stop and realise that most of us feel like this, we begin to create the foundations for positive change in our own lives, and beyond. Embracing what our fierce is telling us will help us to redefine our own lives, and in turn it will affect those around us.

One of the most important parts of this redefinition is a move away from labelling everything either/or. We imprison ourselves by defining our lives within the constraints of binaries such as light and dark, good and bad, right and wrong, with or against. We urgently need to create an alternative discourse that allows us to talk about our uncertainties, our hopes, our doubts, our thought processes, our realities, our messiness and be okay with that. We need to find a way to be okay with ourselves as we are right now, without fear, embracing our fierce.

Even writing this, it is so hard not to include a value judgement: fear is bad and fierce is good. But looking at it in this way doesnt help us. At the heart of the fears to fierce journey is an awareness and understanding of ourselves, not labelling. If we are to free ourselves and determine what truly works for us and our fierce, questioning those labels and moving beyond them to understand who we are, what we really think and feel and what our fierce is telling us, is so important. That self-leadership is at the core of Fears to Fierce.

Moving towards a place where we channel our own values is particularly hard because the boxes we are put into right from when we are children are firmly focused on controlling our power so as not to disrupt the status quo. For as long as I can remember, I knew I was expected to be a good girl, to please, and to fear not being liked. All the while, the power within us wants to emerge. My personal journey of striving to be true to my passions and connect to the fire in my belly has shown me that the answer a meaningful and purposeful life was within me all along. The change we are seeking, the impact we want to create, begins with looking within.

In