Vulnerability

“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure." ~ Joseph Campbell

“To embrace one's brokenness, whatever it looks like, whatever has caused it, carries within it the possibility that one might come to embrace one's healing."~ Robert Benson

I have always found it hard to be vulnerable. A long time ago, deep in the mines of a painful childhood experience, I probably put the essential parts of my heart into a box. Shrouded them in a still, silent, safe darkness.
Around this box, along the peripheral lines of life's narratives, I hold pieces of a story. These pieces are not so hard to look at, these pieces make sense. These pieces can be woven into a good functional cloth. The kind of cloth that's good for cleaning surfaces and polishing mirrors.
The frayed edges? I learned to hem them under till they seem invisible. But they are there and only a few have seen them.

The thing is, we carry stories, and deep in our hearts we know the weight of these stories.
We are afraid to let them fall open, page after page, unravelling like an endless spool.
We are afraid to open the dam and let the waters flow. Perhaps, if we do they will never stop and we will become submerged.

As Brene Brown says in her "Ted talk" below, deep down at soul level, we may not feel even worthy of connection, love and acceptance.

Often a childhood experience made us feel that essentially, we are not enough.
As we grow we feel it necessary to accessorize ourselves with achievement to prove our worthiness.
So we wear the correct apparel, maintain the appropriate etiquette and keep up appearances.
This is especially pertinent for girls, who are often told to "be nice" quiet and feminine. A girls sense of natural tom-boyishness is often oppressed during adolescence in particular causing shame.
My eldest girl is very tomboyish now that she is a week away from official "teenage hood". And I have noticed that many girls naturally explore the masculine side of their characters during puberty. Yet this is exactly the time when society presses girls into a more overt expression of one dimensional femininity.

Some previous experience of letting go and becoming vulnerable can also remind us that people can recoil, or reject us for our pain.
These experiences only compound our fears so that when, in time, other's do try to get close, their gentle touch and abandonment to love can seem almost harder to embrace than the loneliness. Friendship can seem similar to an antique porcelain vase. Precious, yet so incredibly fragile.
In the end it may seem safer to simply step away to prevent the inevitable shattering of beauty at our clumsy touch.

Still, connection, deep, true connection is vital to our very organism. The fibres of our humananess.

Some Studies even indicate that forging real intimate connections can help you live longer.
Yet the desire for authenticity and real relationship remains at odds against the fear of being hurt, rejected, judged.
So many social interactions simply link splintered truths and fragmented stories one to another like a crumbling chain. Shards rattling in memory jars.
The child inside the box, stays long lost and orphaned from the world hugging her knees to her chest, till the quiet takes over and the solitude echoes once again. Then we cry silent tears into pillows.

Often it can be that while a part of us hides in the depths another part struggles to tread life's surface waves.
While one part of us hides in the shadows, another part, the part that has grown up as a "coper" consumes, strives and may even excel in external occupations.
The gap between the two pieces of self ever widens and divides while the lines between truth and fiction ever merge and blur. Sometimes we may even sacrifice "the child" completely for the intoxicating feeling of control and success we derive from our external persona.

But my world for this year is "True."

Truth is always ready to open the box, peel back the layers, unravel the stories. Truth is defiant like that.

I can feel that I am becoming more ready to let go of the fear of being vulnerable. Embrace the child, take hold of her hand and bring her into the light.

Shadows will fall, cracks will show, but truth is compassionate as it is courageous and I will trust it to navigate.

Truth like Love overcomes the fear that I am not "enough".
The fear that God is not "enough" to sustain me just as I am.

To embrace truth is to accept...
My story is enough.
My efforts are enough.
My best is enough.
My intentions are enough.

Enough.
And that is all that is required.

Thanking FIMBY for the Brene Brown Link...

Part of "Imperfect Prose" on Thursdays