Charley speaks of how her epic fails teach her to revive and Brave out her Days
Hello, I’m Charley from Brave Your Day,
I have worked professionally as a social/community worker, coach and therapist for over 32 years within the Glasgow and London not-for-profit sector, with women, men & children surviving the daily survival of trauma, violence, abuse, ageism, invisibility, addiction, poverty….and problems with living.
More recently, for 12 years, I founded a membership forum of Glasgow service provider organisations that delivered health and social care services to vulnerable people.
I modernised and re-branded its approach to become a ‘social innovation’ charity that envisioned, designed and created alternatives to community social care support gaps with people themselves.
Yeah, we had a lot of successes and at points we were name checked and hailed as the ‘next big thing’.
I led the curation of many radical alternative economies in the city with real communities, I took risks with their crazy brave ideas, I personally unlearned a lot of ‘professional’ learning along the way and suffered painful isolation and debilitating setbacks because of abject gut wrenching public failures.
BUT best of all were the everyday real, meaningful, deep conversations and explorations with real people, who believed in the importance of empowering personal culture started with their relationship with themselves, to shift and pressurise the status quo.
Brave indeed! So much so our core funder pulled the plug!
In 2017 I chose redundancy as a new 50-year-old, and set about co-founding a passion company, with my husband Colin.
Together we brave out our days, every day, our way!
We are evolving as a pair of International Bravery Explorers, studying and supporting bravery culture through our bravery program ‘Brave Your Day-Your Way’™ and ‘Bravery Coaching’™ with people, organisations and communities in the UK and overseas (mainly New York).
So far, we’ve hosted 65 Bravery sessions with 925 social care staff, teachers, social workers, community activists, women chief executives, people in recovery and individuals committed to leading change in their lives.
We have also delivered over 400 hours of Bravery coaching, in person and over the phone, with over 66 women refugees, people returning to their communities from prison, social work managers, social enterprise leaders, artists, creatives, musicians and people seeking to embrace a braver life.
Everything we do is aimed at those who are intent on stirring, saluting & reviving their own resilience, bravery and survival in the world.
In August we are risking lots by bringing our bravery message to life through printed truth stories from across the world in our own indie magazine. Sign up for updates www.braveyourdaymag.com
If any of this chimes with you and you are intent on moving from thinking or talking about change to taking responsibility to make it for yourself we’d love to support you …go on be brave and reach out to us…
Charley
Charley@braveyourday.com @braveyourday @braveyourdaymag