Vulnerability is scary. I understand. I can understand why people would want to delegate it to someone else. This is your job. You’re good at it. You do it.
I understand why people are so afraid to share their struggles with people while they are going through the actual struggle. There is a very real risk that people will relate to them based on their season, and not their identity.
It is so much easier to share about some painful event or season, once it has passed. It is much easier to read your story to someone else once you have your happy ever after. It is much safer that way. That way we can ‘do’ vulnerability without appearing weak. When you invite people into your story in the middle of the mess, you are making yourself vulnerable to their words and actions while you are in a more fragile state than you would usually be. Which is vulnerability by definition: making yourself vulnerable to wounding. It requires the appearance of weakness. Which is not always safe.
Don’t confuse your season or your actions with your identity. I have often been told that I bring process and vulnerability to the table. (“The table” … that’s for another post) So I have ended up taking it on as my identity. I made agreement that being the ‘bringer of vulnerability’ was my personal responsibility on behalf of the community. And that is a terrible burden for any individual to carry. I became tired and I became weary…and I became angry. I was ready to cash in my credentials and disappear into the sunset. Free from the crushing weight of community. But there is something that keeps me here… a whisper of hope perhaps. Perhaps a quiet realization that long ago someone said that the burden is supposed to be light. So I am letting go of that terrible weight of responsibility. I am responsible for my own vulnerability. As you are responsible for yours.
Fortunately there are people who call out my identity in the middle of the hard seasons. I am thankful for these people. They have the courage to speak prophetically into my life. They are the voices that cry out in my wilderness. They provide a flicker of light in the darkness. Enough light to begin to find my own way again. When you are in it, the dark night of the soul, can often feel like it stretches on forever. This is simply who you are now.
I want to tell people to stop saying that vulnerability/process is what I ‘bring’ to the fabled table. (In a much more colourful way than what I would write here) It is some thing that I can do. But it is not the only thing that I can do. You can do it too. Vulnerability is not for a select few. It is not a role that certain people are entrusted with. It is a human thing. You cannot get through life without having to exercise some bravery now and then. Don’t label others as the ‘brave ones’ to excuse yourself from the hard work of living. Vulnerability is a verb. In truth it is not actually something you bring to the table. It is the act of bringing yourself to the table. So, in fact, it is every person’s responsibility.
There are no experts in this game. We are all learners. We are all in different stages of our learning, which can sometimes be confused for expertise.
Vulnerability is not simply crying in public. I cry in public. Not because I am being brave, but because I am not very good at controlling it. The number of times people have told me of how they stood at a distance and ‘admired’ my courage. Of how good I am at vulnerability. What I needed in that moment was not their admiration, but their support. They didn’t realize that at that time I had a need. I was feeling exposed and alone. But they genuinely thought that they were ‘celebrating’ me. They thought they were encouraging me, but they were actually hurting me instead. They didn’t know. If I were an expert in vulnerability, I would have made my needs known. But I hadn’t told them. So they didn’t know.
That’s one of the things about vulnerability; you can’t celebrate it from behind the safety of your carefully constructed walls. Also can I just say that we don’t ‘do’ vulnerability by encouraging others to be vulnerable and then standing back at a distance and observing. I would not call that celebrating vulnerability. I would call that voyeurism.
We celebrate our vulnerability by standing with each other, as we both hold who we are in our hands, open and outstretched in front of us. Exposed, unprotected and unashamed. In community, true vulnerability is something that people share. It isn’t taught as much as it is lived. Together. We hold hands and step into it together.
Vulnerability can look like talking about your feelings, or asking for help. But it can also look like writing a blog or publishing a book, performing a piece of music, sharing your artwork, marketing your services or a product you have made, asking someone out for coffee, confronting someone who has hurt you, starting a business, going back to school, facing an illness, pursuing a friendship, and doing almost anything new.
Vulnerability looks like risk. Letting people see the real you is a risk.
It is a risk to let people see our greatness. What if we give them the best of who we are, and they are left wanting? We weren’t enough.
It is a risk to let people see our weakness. What if our wounds are exposed, and they define us by our injury? We become misunderstood.
Vulnerability is not easy. It can be hard. Hard and terrifying. But it is a job that belongs not to the few, but to everyone.