After my recent post about being raised by a mentally ill alcoholic mother who killed herself when I was in my 20’s, I received a lot of messages from people commending me for being brave enough to share something so personal and make myself so vulnerable in a public space.
The thing is, I didn’t feel vulnerable at all in sharing that story.
I felt empowered. I felt strong. I felt connected. I felt loved.
The definition of vulnerable is “capable of being physically or emotionally wounded.” Sharing a personal story about something unpleasant that occurred in my life didn’t make me feel any more open to injury than I was before I shared it. But the fact that so many people perceived what I did as something that made me vulnerable says a lot about how we view hardships, failures, and mistakes.
We all seem to have been raised with this unconscious programming that anything less than perfection is not tolerable, lessens our value as people, and makes us vulnerable. This is straight-up wrong, and I’ll tell you why:
None of us are “perfect” (well actually we are all perfect, but none of us measure up to society’s/our own insane standards for what constitutes perfection). We are all flawed in the sense that we’ve all made mistakes, suffered failures and hardships, behaved in ways we later regretted…the list goes on. We’ve ALL had these same experiences that could be classified as vulnerabilities because they’re things people might make fun of us or criticize us for.
These “vulnerabilities” make us real people, they are shared experiences that provide us with a platform for connecting with each other. Owning your own shit puts you in the powerful position of accepting responsibility for your life, both for the things you control and for your reactions to the things you can’t control. Every vulnerability is an opportunity to assess, to improve, to act with love instead of fear. In many cases vulnerabilities are gifts that empower us to connect with others in a meaningful way and to move into alignment with our true selves.
Make a mistake? Learn from it and don’t make that mistake again. Hurt someone’s feelings? Apologize and ask for forgiveness. Get dealt a lousy hand (see above re: alcoholic mentally ill mother)? Learn what you can from that situation and use it to improve your life. Tried to do something and failed at it? Now you know something you didn’t before, and you can use it to inform future decisions and behavior.
Do you see a common theme here? ALL of these things that we tend to think of as vulnerabilities have the potential to be incredibly empowering. It is possible to be strong and powerful in every single one of these situations.
Maybe it’s just a side effect of how I grew up but I think vulnerability is an illusion. I think it’s all about how we perceive things and react to them–that’s what makes something a vulnerability or a strength. I’m so tired of taboo topics, people being embarrassed or ashamed to be who they really are, and all the ridiculous facades we construct and hide behind because being real is scary. None of this helps anyone and it simply divides us from each other. Being real isn’t scary, it’s necessary.
What skeletons do you have hiding in your closet that are ready to come out? What mistakes have you made that you’re ready to accept so you can empower yourself to move forward? What vulnerabilities do you have that you can turn into strengths? Reply in the comments below or if you’re afraid to share publicly, email me directly at contact@jessicapeppler.com. I’m all about helping you reframe your perception to empower you, so that you can own your strength, connect with others, and feel the love.
