A midnight reflection on vulnerability

It’s hard to restart a blog after 6 years. Each extra day, week, month and year that it lies dormant makes you feel even more pressure to get that first, “restarting” post just right.

Which is ironic, since I’m restarting the blog to connect with people over a novel I’ve written about vulnerability. (It’s also about a number of other things – dance, mental health, resilience, common humanity – but the power of vulnerability is among the deepest themes and messages.)

Then, around midnight a few nights ago, I threw together a Facebook post expressing my ruminations and struggles. I was honestly reaching out for help. And I received the help: multiple comments of support, phone conversations, texts. And with it, the unease I’ve been feeling for the last two weeks, since promoting the novel started to become more real, has started to soothe.

So, forget the “perfect” re-introduction. The truth is, sharing this novel feels vulnerable and probably always will. It’s time to lean into that. Because we can’t connect unless we allow ourselves to be seen.

I hope to do that in my posts in the coming weeks: show a little bit of myself (and how that’s been reflected in the novel I’ve written) and connect with readers who are interested in diving deeper, in taking this journey with me. A midnight reflection is the place to start.

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Guys why is vulnerability so hard?

Like, hard enough that even though you wrote a book about vulnerability, it feels too vulnerable to actually share it in an authentic way?

And then I worry even this post will read as inauthentic and being about promoting the book, which it’s not, it’s honestly what I’ve been grappling with for the last couple of weeks since this journey started feeling a lot more real?

I feel like my social media use over the last, well, decade has been mostly silence/lurking, interspersed with some curated vulnerability – expressing things just vulnerable enough to look vulnerable but not quite cross the line of truly being vulnerable.

But then, maybe social media’s not the ideal forum for true vulnerability, anyway.

And more than that – it’s not about vulnerability, per se. It’s about authenticity, right? Showing up as your true self. Not hiding or performing in the interest of fitting in. I wonder if social media is the antithesis of authenticity. But I’m also not quite sure where else to connect, these socially distanced days. Except, perhaps, for one Zoom meeting and one phone call at a time.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who’s done those meetings and calls with me recently … and if you have any useful insights on my midnight rambling, please let me know.

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