Breaking Though the Lie of Vulnerability in Our Culture

There is a lie woven into the fabric of our culture today that vulnerability is weakness. Because of this lie, we have a false sense of strength. In avoiding vulnerability, we have hidden away the deepest parts of our soul’s yearning. Instead of embracing vulnerability, we have traded it in for a false persona of toughness; all an attempt to find refuge from our pain. Somewhere in your story you experienced something so painful, you felt the only way to stop the pain, whether you realized it or not, was to reject vulnerability out of fear. You separated your soul from what it desires most— connection. Brene Brown defines connection as “the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship.” True connection does NOT exist without vulnerability. 

We aren’t born afraid of vulnerability.  When we were born, we cried when we needed our caregivers; we self-soothed to comfort ourselves, and we touched and leaned into our parents on a physical and emotional level. Babies rely on vulnerability to survive. As we grow out of infancy, we learn the hard lesson that people will let us down and as they do, we experience emotional wounds. Maybe there has been trauma impairing our instincts to lean on people for connection and comfort; maybe our parents met our pain with shame, judgment, and/ or deafening silence… Whatever fits your story for how vulnerability became a place of fear in your life it is never too late to address the wounded child within you. Though this inner child had to grow up too fast, it’s never too late to repair your vulnerability.

And, that is the GOOD news... You CAN heal your vulnerable child when you strip back your hardened layers and allow yourself to rise out of fear and shame. Healing begins when you give yourself grace to simply be where you are and come out of hiding. It’s important to understand being vulnerable is the invitation to healing, which is a PROCESS.  But, through the journey, you will learn to regain control of your environment, so you can return to being vulnerable, in hopes to connect and heal from what broke you to begin with. In no way am I promising that it will be easy, but we will never reach the other side of our pain unless we walk straight through it. Envision it with me now… your wounded child, breaking through the chains of fear, climbing out of the trenches of lonely darkness, and finally cutting every chain tying you to the lie that your vulnerability is weakness, and enter into the new space of feeling light again, as you allow yourself to need others, to feel, and to communicate. What is waiting for you on the other side is simply…beautiful.