Ten Lessons in 2020: Vulnerability + Surrender

Photo: Christopher.James

Brené Brown’s “The Power of Vulnerability” Tedx has been on my suggested watch list since she recorded it. I’ve been a big believer in this power my whole life. I’m not really sure from where this belief was born, I can trace it back to the very beginning of this incarnation for me. I’ve been a writer/poet my whole life healing through words, I’ve been comfortable healing aloud and sharing my process, I feel called to teach, guide and serve sharing my heart and lived experience, I know I am a forever student and will never know all the answers - vulnerability is in my blood.

Even though I’ve always known there is power in vulnerability, this year’s amplified vulnerability was an opportunity to see this illuminated.

“To share your weakness is to make yourself vulnerable; to make yourself vulnerable is to show your strength.” - Criss Jami

This year taught me a deeper lesson about vulnerability as I shed my armor to become as fully in my feminine essence as I could, laying down a masculine shell built to protect me that I’ve been carrying my whole life. This, synchronized with a year of absolute vulnerability in pandemic ways left me feeling wide open most of the year. It’s messy to find yourself in a new place, in new clothes, and doing it out in the open. This vulnerable me was tested time and time again this year and I failed over and over again; wanting to armor up, revert back to the false strength and familiar pattern, but I held my ground and vowed to lean into softness instead.

Every single time.

I learned that surrender is vulnerability’s friend. I learned this when a dear friend called me during my new nakedness this Summer, and the conversation ended our twenty-year friendship because of her judgement of me. I was so caught off-guard from this new place of being unarmed that I found myself scrambling on the call; justifying and feeling the depths and cracks and crevices of this new vulnerability. It wasn’t until weeks later that I was able to surrender, and in that surrender strength was born.

Ego, wounds, root chakra imbalance…all foes of vulnerability.

Imagine a world where each one of us could lean into our vulnerabilities and trust that they could lead us to strength if we surrendered instead of fighting, justifying, convincing, judging…imagine.

One of my very favorite stories of strength and vulnerability is the story of Sita, when she is being tested by her husband Rama. She’s in an incredibly vulnerable position and she walks around him three times and tells him that if she is telling the truth she will walk into the fire and be untouched…she walks in and Agni appears, reaches out his hand and leads her out. Untouched by the fire her truth is proven.

She knew it all along.

What a year of strength this has been, strength born of vulnerability and surrender…trusting that it was there all along.

Thank you 2020.