Dare to be Vulnerable

vul·ner·a·ble
adjective
susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm.

It’s no wonder we don’t want to feel vulnerable, right? We think we’re protecting ourselves.

But what if we’re actually holding ourselves back? What if we’re really harming ourselves?

This is something I’ve struggled with internally for a long time. For years. Possibly for my whole “adult” life (the jury’s still out on whether or not I qualify as an adult though). Because it seems like the smart, safe, easier choice to put up walls and keep our thoughts and feelings to ourselves. And the older I get, the more mistakes I make, I realize how very wrong this is. How weak and fake and harmful.

I remember one time about four years ago, my significant other at the time was going to the Oregon coast with friends to go fishing and a couple of days before he was to leave, he approached me and asked how I felt about strip clubs. STRIP CLUBS.

(Pause to insert that I’ve always been a fairly naive, prude-ish, sheltered girl and I can honestly say up to this point in my life, I didn’t have any feelings about strip clubs. They didn’t exist in my world.)

I was caught off guard but knew immediately that the thought of my significant other ogling half-naked (more than half-naked?) “ladies” was not something I was comfortable with. And I told him so. I very, very clearly told him this was something I was not only uncomfortable with, but did not agree with on any level. I shared my feelings.

And after their trip it came to light that he went anyway.

Ouch.

(I eventually quit attempting to share my feelings with this particular person, and in hindsight I can see that this was a learned self-preservation tool. Was it the right thing to do? No, probably not. Was it the healthy thing to do? Absolutely not. But it’s what I did.)

To share our feelings is to be vulnerable to hurt. To share our feelings with someone close to us and then be hurt by them, to be disrespected by their actions or words…? That’s a whole different kind of hurt.

And to choose to continue to share our feelings, our thoughts, our wants, our needs, our hopes, dreams, fears… that’s strength.

To dare to be vulnerable is to be authentic, to tell the world “here I am, you cannot break me for I am strong and courageous.”

Vulnerability is beautiful.

“Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our greatest measure of courage.”
-Brené Brown