"To be vulnerable is to be alive."
For the longest time I’ve
been struggling to let people get close enough to see the parts of me that hurt, to
see the parts that still feel broken and still need repairing. I have been
reading Brene Brown’s work on wholehearted living, and have started to realise
that it is only when we open up to others in this way that we can truly connect
and be our truest selves.
In Daring
Greatly, Brene discusses the results she obtained from different people when
asked what vulnerability means to each one personally. I gave this some thought and wrote down everything that came to mind. No filtering or
overthinking.
For me vulnerability is:
Allowing
someone to see the real me
Being loved
Taking risks
Standing in my
truth
Making new
friends
Maintaining
friendships
Sharing my
writing with others
Loving and
caring for someone
Seeking
connection
Exploring
sexuality
Being sexy and
attractive
Putting in
effort
Being
ambitious
Asking for
help
This is quite a list but I have started making some progress into understanding and accepting it. Some things I find easier to do than others. Some days allowing myself to seek these things feels fine,
and completely doable while other days I find it a bit more challenging. I often struggle to tell my friends that I am having a tough time, or that I am feeling
stuck and not good enough. Most of the time I am worried about how they would
respond to seeing this “weakness”. The mask that I wear most often is that
everything is OK and that I have all my shit together. I want to be that person, but I kept falling short.
I am
learning more and more each day that vulnerability is the furthest thing from
weakness. As Brene says, “Vulnerability
sounds like truth and feels like courage.”
I remind myself that all we have
to do is take one tiny step in the direction towards what we want and eventually,
when we glance back, we’ll see how far we have come. This is what keeps me
going.
