Brené Brown Has Ruined Me

Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness. – Brené Brown

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I wrote last night. It’s been a long time since I carved out time from my full-time job and 2-hour+ daily commute to sit and do what I love. I expected it to be refreshing and rejuvenating. Some of it was. Then I popped around various blogs and online publications reading other works of communicative art. I wish I could say that I was filled with encouragement and insight... but the only insight I went to bed with was, “Everyone else is so talented. That’s not me.” I was riddled with comparison and envy and fear.

I woke up with an emotional hangover.

I sat outside on the patio with my coffee, feeling like the sun was way too warm for that hour of morning (which is typical in Los Angeles), and my head spun stories. It told me about all the ways I didn’t match up to my dreams.

Observing what was happening inside, I knew what I needed to do. I needed to pray, not reach for the TV remote or something to numb me from my self-made pain, and I needed to tell other people about what I was experiencing. A daunting task.

I texted...

Just have to share that I am really challenged with my “enoughness” today. Feels likes ocean waves sweeping over me of not being good enough, smallness, and insignificance. I’m sitting in it, trying to learn from it, trying to remind myself of the truth that I AM enough.

In the past, I believed sharing something that deep, that real, that honest would make me appear weak. Sometimes I still I feel like I would rather die than reveal the Grand Canyon that sits in my chest. Hold it together at all costs. Don’t cry in public. Impression management.

This is how Brené Brown has ruined me.

My head and my heart are often at war with each other, and the most powerful solution to healing that part of me that is screaming inside is to share it. I don’t lose anything; in fact, I gain dignity in sharing my truth. It is my fear that keeps me feeling small. Sharing the ache might not bring relief immediately but a lifestyle of vulnerability is a worthy, self-loving aim. (Right, Brené?)

Audacious, if I do say so myself.