Perhaps This Time We’ll Really Open Up?

“I define vulnerability as uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure ….  When you shut down vulnerability you shut down opportunity.”  Brene Brown

Sociologist and popular author/speaker Brene Brown has given one of the most watched TED talks of all time on the subject of vulnerability and has almost single-handedly brought the subject into mainstream America.   Part of why I admire her work is that she doesn’t sugar-coat what it takes to be vulnerable.  At the same time, she doesn’t downplay the cost of our unwillingness to do so.    

The dictionary defines vulnerability as “willingness to show emotion or to allow one’s weakness to be seen or known.”  It’s Latin roots link it to the word “wounding.”   Because being vulnerable may open one up to “emotional wounding,” being willing to be vulnerable takes great courage.  It also, however, gives us the opportunity to share our emotional wounds with another, which provides an opening for potential healing.

In her poem “Wild Geese,” Mary Oliver says the following:  “Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.”   The pandemic has provided lots of opportunity for us to feel despair, and also many other strong and historically “negatively charged” emotions, such as fear, shame, resignation, and more. 

And while I’m able to acknowledge to myself that there has been a substantial emotional cost of the pandemic to both my professional and personal life, sharing those sentiments with others and processing them is not always easy for me.  Perhaps you can relate?  It’s part of our “medical programming.”  But having a PeerRxMed partner and knowing we’ll be checking in this week – and knowing that the questions in the cover e-mail might help prompt such a conversation, makes doing so a bit easier. 

As our society begins to open up again in a way we’ve not been since March of 2020, we also have a chance, and a reason, to open up to each other in a different way.    Please seize that opportunity.  Allow yourself to be a bit more emotionally vulnerable with others.  After all, no one should “despair alone.”  Including you!