Vulnerability

Showing your cards before the dealer asks for them

You don’t realize how much you are cared for until something really challenging happens in your life like cancer. I was blown away by the outpouring of love and support that came my way when I announced my cancer diagnosis. I knew it was something I could not physically hide and would need to be addressed at some point. Admittedly, I was nervous to share it.  This whole thing is so incredibly vulnerable and for some odd reason I feel called to give a first hand account of my experience. 

Vulnerability is this raw exposé that opens you up in a way where it feels as if your insides are completely out for all to see. Even when it is just between you and another person. Like you are showing your cards before the hand is called. You wonder how it will be received and if you will be understood. I think that is the scariest thing about vulnerability. Will you be accepted in this walls down, ‘no bars up’ state of being? That is where the feeling of nausea comes in and the unknowing sits.

This is something that I have been working on in my life for the past couple years. When I left my corporate job in 2015, it was the first time my physical body stopped me in my tracks and was like “you need to chill.” You need to listen to me and start to get a hold of how you are moving through life. I recognize now that it was a life that I was living for others and not myself. I had so many expectations about who I was supposed to be that I was completely lost. This is where I had to unravel in order to discover what I truly wanted, and unravel I sure did.

It led me on a quest, yes a quest, to see what I was made of and what was inside of me that I had kept hidden for so long.  It took a lot of therapy and also a lot of soul searching. It also pushed me to let go of things in my life that didn’t align, and start to understand what did. Because once you say yes to yourself and to your life, there is no going back. The things I let go of is another story.  

I find it important to share more about vulnerability and what I understand it to be. For it has been a huge part of my life, even when it hasn’t been supported or accepted by others. There is no ego in vulnerability, that is for sure. I wonder why we are so scared of it? I wonder why, as humans, we avoid it so?  Because it truly is our bridge for connection. Why don’t we want to open up our souls for others to see?

I know all the answers to these questions - it is scary and hard and raw. The question of how the other will react when we do, is the biggest roadblock, I think.  Will we be accepted? Will we be understood? Truthfully, we can’t know that until we start to share. And then we get to decide if that other is worthy of that vulnerability.  When I say worthy, someone we feel safe enough to share and safe enough to continue to open our heart up to. Sometimes we realize they are not, and that can be one of the hardest realizations. There is no fault in this realization, it is where their level of consciousness rests. 

The truth that I know to be about vulnerability is it is the gateway to our heart. The gateway to getting in touch with that pure sense of self. The sense of self that has no expectations, no rules, no preconceived notions and lives from a place of pure joy. Once you can start to trust it, you can start to trust yourself. For all those answers to life’s questions, truly do live inside of you. You know what you need and what you want for your life. It is unique and different for all of us. The key to truly tapping into it, to allow yourself to see and be open to the purest and truest expression of yourself. Showing your cards before the dealer asks for them.