The Courage to Go: A Memoir of the Seven Thousand Miles That Healed Me

by Emily Dobberstein

As the foundations of her identity crumbled, Emily Dobberstein was left questioning everything. Searching to find life again, she set off on a solo road trip with only one direction in West.

 

This unpredictable, vulnerable, winsome, and inspirational seven-thousand-mile travel memoir is the story of how one woman found the courage to go, to tell the truth, and to make peace with the shadows in her life that she had been trying to ignore. All she could do was hope that upon her return from wherever the open road would take her, she might be a little more healed and a little more whole.

 

In the midst of thrilling storytelling of adventures while living out of her car, backpacking, and hiking in many national parks in the Western United States, Dobberstein seamlessly integrates her internal dialogue filled with hard questions, spiritual transformation, and divine transcendence. By sharing her musings on wonder, grief, womanhood, healing, and her Christian faith deconstruction, Dobberstein invites us all to reconsider where we come from and challenges us to plunge forward courageously into our own great unknown.

Reviews

[Trudie Barreras · Rating 5 out of 5]

While reading “The Courage To Go: A Memoir of the Seven Thousand Miles that Healed Me” by Emily Dobberstein, I could not help mentally referencing the quote: “And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.“ (Acts 2:17). This passage is actually part of the sermon the Apostle Peter gives to the multitudes trying to explain the Pentecost even and quoting the Prophet Joel, but it fits absolutely perfectly with a phenomenon I believe to be spectacularly epitomized by Dobberstein’s remarkable spiritual memoir.

First, of course, it is amazing and wonderful that someone as young as this author has actually produced a self-analysis so deep and probing yet articulated with the beauty and insight which fills every single page. Emily Dobberstein describes herself as a 20-year-old college student, studying in Boone, NC, steeped in the “Purity Culture” of conservative Protestant Christianity. Betrayed by her long-term boyfriend for whom she has been “keeping herself pure”, she is emotionally and spiritually devastated. Her solution is to launch on a partially solo (although she subsequently teams up with her brother and some friends) road trip “out West”. Her objective is above all things to deconstruct the toxic religious assertions upon which her belief system has been built and try to develop a valid spiritual outlook that leads her out of depression and rage.

Emily is a child of our modern era, and although she does journaling in the more traditional sense, she also utilizes her smart phone to do “voice-to-text” recordings, including of a truly amazing auditory revelation she had while visiting the Painted Desert in Arizona on her way west (ah, if only Joan of Arc had had technology!), so her sharing has a truly riveting immediacy and authenticity. Although at the beginning the narrative might seem entirely too filled with youthful angst, the author thrashing in her own thoughts, as she travels and interweaves the physical as well as emotional and spiritual experiences she has, it becomes absolutely real, and completely fascinating. From every possible perspective, this is a vitally important book, and should become a Spiritual Journey Classic for our modern age!

[Fr. River · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Courage to Go!"

By Emily Dobberstein

Emily Dobberstein's story is the story of "'every person", in her struggle to find who she is. She is from the south, and yet no matter where we're from, our race, or sex, nationality, etc as long as we never leave home, on the "heroes" journey to find who we are, we will not be allowed to grow, mature, and become our own selves. North, South, West, East all have their biases, their way of living, isolated by their own prejudices, biases, and in embracing The Courage to Go we become humans who see our struggles, as a part of our full development as human beings..


Emily was a member of a fundamentalist religious group, that shaped her life, told her how to behave, and believe. She was a member of the "in" group. And as she came to question her faith, and the mentality of her religious background she risks rejection.


In making her seven thousand mile journey west her healing began, and in the words of Henri Nouwen:


"For a very long time I considered low self-esteem to be some kind of virtue. I had been warned so often against pride and conceit that I came to consider it a good thing to deprecate myself. But now I realize that the real sin is to deny God’s first love for me, to ignore my original goodness. Because without claiming that first love and that original goodness for myself, I lose touch with my true self and embark on the destructive search among the wrong people and in the wrong places for what can only be found in the house of my Father."

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Fr. River Damien Sims

P.O. Box 642656

San Francisco, CA 94164

www.temenos.org

[Whitney Harrison · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed her story, I think it reiterates needing to work through your problems and everyones problems no matter how big or how small can cause trauma.

[Todd Holcomb · Rating 5 out of 5]

An open, honest, and adventurous tale

Emily shares her inner and outer journey in an open way that makes me feel like I’m riding in the car with her. I can relate to the path she was on, many of the places she visited, and some of the experiences she had. She gave expression to some of my own unarticulated thoughts, and through her own story invites me to continue the journey into the unknown.