The Courage to Be Vulnerable
Stepping into our authenticity to find our strength – By Stacey Huget
How many of us have been conditioned to be tough, to show the world our game-face, to just suck it up, buttercup? Our confusion, insecurity, despair – these are things we’re taught to hide away, like signs of so-called weakness in a world that values strong. The irony is that it takes courage to be vulnerable, it takes strength.
I don’t understand. I am hurt. I am afraid.
These are courageous statements, and the act of saying them is an act of strength.
Nothing exists without its opposite. We can’t fully embody our strength without also fully embodying our vulnerability and then moving through it. The shortcuts we think we’re taking – bucking up and pretending we’re not as we are – they don’t take us to our place of strength. They take us to our place of fear, of inauthenticity, where the ground is spongey and eventually gives way.
Being our authentic selves, no matter how vulnerable, gives us back our solid ground.
Yes, it can be scary to be vulnerable. We’re taking a leap, a risk. We don’t know where we’ll land, how we’ll handle it, how others will react, whether we’ll feel worse before we feel better. That’s a lot of fear to step into.
Stepping into our fear is an opportunity to discover our own resilience – to learn we can endure and transcend virtually any moment, no matter how challenging; to learn our emotions are our own and that others only hurt or humiliate or diminish us when we choose to let them. It’s an opportunity to be and grow, to become.
The most courageous thing we ever do is discover ourselves and our sometimes-messy becoming – especially in the company of other people.
I need help might be one of the scariest things we ever say. And yet, when we muster our strength to be vulnerable in this way, to reach out to other people, we open the door to connection.
Of course, it’s our choice whether or not we open that door, and there are situations where doing so might be unsafe – where the risk of physical or emotional violence is present.
But in most of the situations we find ourselves in and with most of the people we encounter, opening that door is safer than we think it is. Being vulnerable in front of others doesn’t usually drive them away or invite their rejection. It’s actually one of the things that connects us, that invites their empathy and compassion and respect. Because openness and authenticity is what we most easily dial into. It isn’t the only portal we travel through to meet each other, but it’s one of the most direct ones.
Think about it. How hard is it for us to connect with people who never reveal their vulnerability, who never show us their cracks?
There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in, wrote Leonard Cohen.
This is a lifelong process, this circling through and out of what scares us, this ever-expanding discovery of ourselves. We come to know the depths of our own strength and resilience, embrace the opposites living within us, and finesse a kind of balancing – a standing on our own solid ground.
The truth is, we’re mostly okay with other people’s cracks – and if we’re not, it might be because we’re afraid of our own. This is what we need to remember: When others don’t hold space for our vulnerability, it might be because they don’t hold space for their own. It’s about them, not us.
Being vulnerable does open the door to deeper connection, growth, discovery and resilience – but we have to also do the work of moving though it. We need to understand and process our confusion, our insecurity, our despair in order to get past it, let it go.
This moving through it is key. Becoming our vulnerability, donning it like a cloak in the hope that others will meet our needs – that’s just more avoidance, more fear. Others can help, but we are the ones who must ultimately meet our own needs. We don’t have to meet those needs quickly, but we have to meet them in earnest and with a whole heart – drawing on our own curiosity, compassion, and courage. Whatever answers, whatever closures we seek – they are within us.
This is a lifelong process, this circling through and out of what scares us, this ever-expanding discovery of ourselves. We come to know the depths of our own strength and resilience, embrace the opposites living within us, and finesse a kind of balancing – a standing on our own solid ground.
There will always be vulnerability within us, because our process of being and becoming is never complete. Moreover, no one will ever completely understand our unique experience. In that sense, we are alone.
But here’s the paradox: While we are alone in our own unique journey, we are also in good company – because that aloneness is a universal experience we all share.
It resonates with all of us.
As does our courage.
