Taking fear by the hand

It’s 9pm. A young management trainee sits alone in an office in Romania, translating a Coca-Cola Christmas campaign.

Santa coming down the chimney feels all wrong to her. In Romania, Christmas means community rituals like the dance of the bear. She considers emailing her manager to suggest a local campaign instead.

“Who are you to do that?” her inner critic demands. 

So she says nothing, and she completes the translation task. 

Her inner critic prevailed, and the uneasy feeling remained the same.

That trainee was Corina Enache, my guest on the latest episode of Fearless Forward. Ten years into her corporate career, an anthropologist on a project in Brazil asked a question that hit her so hard that she gave up her job and became an anthropologist herself.

Now, through her consultancy Kotka, she helps people turn deep imagination into responsible action.

Three ideas from our conversation have stayed with me.

Fear can’t be banished. When Corina was born, her father was in prison for speaking out against the communist regime. And when she went to him as a small child with her own fears, he told her: “This doesn’t belong here.”

And yet, fear is a part of life. If we try to get rid of it, we miss the opportunity to understand its shape and its wisdom. And it will resurface on another day, in another way.

Fear is information. It shows us how much we value something, and how much is at stake. So when fear shows up, it’s worth asking what it’s telling us.

We’re not meant to face fear alone. At the edge of a waterfall, in an ayahuasca ceremony, with the village shaman sitting behind her, Corina took her fear by the hand and jumped with it. Years later, afraid to write publicly, she was given space on a respected thinker’s blog. He never told her what he thought of her writing. His restraint gave her the freedom she needed.

Two companions, each time. Her fear. And someone who believed she could find her own way.

Having lived in Eastern Europe for eight years, I recognise the world Corina describes.

And a question to take into your week: What fear are you carrying alone right now, and who might help you hold it?

Highlights:

• [00:00:25] Introducing Corina Enache and the episode
• [00:01:53] The pivotal moment in Brazil
• [00:04:01] Responsibility, ancestry, and agency
• [00:07:23] Love and following intuition
• [00:08:34] Fear and the campaign Corina didn’t challenge
• [00:12:04] Learning to recognize fear
• [00:14:06] Her father’s lessons about fear and self-protection
• [00:15:07] Ayahuasca and meeting fear
• [00:18:14] Facing the fear of death
• [00:20:24] Fear as a companion
• [00:25:58] Finding support through fear
• [00:27:38] Fear, writing, and finding her voice
• [00:32:27] Permission without validation
• [00:36:10] Integrating her writing voices
• [00:40:24] Fearless Forward: partnership and discovery
• [00:41:09] Closing reflections and listener suggestions

Links:

• Corina Enache – LinkedIn
• Kotka – Helping Living Things Grow Well
• Corina Enache – Substack
• Dave Snowden – The Cynefin Co
• Vanilla Sky – 2001 film – Wikipedia
• Stephen Jenkinson – author, teacher, grief literacy advocate – Wikipedia
• Stephen Jenkinson – Die Wise – A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul
• Viktor Frankl – Man’s Search for Meaning
• Ingrid Betancourt – Even Silence Has an End
• Cynthia Bourgeault – mystic, Episcopal priest, writer, retreat leader