Building Community through Vulnerability

Last Monday I wrote about my big Facebook announcement and how vulnerable it made me feel. Thankfully, the video has generated a number of likes, shares, and comments, all of them positive. That, combined with an earlier post on how community can help or hinder the healing process, has got me thinking about how emotional vulnerability can help us build helpful, supportive, healing communities.

The word vulnerable derives from vulnus, the Latin word for wound, and it means "open to attack, harm or damage." "Open to" - not damaged yet, not broken yet, but allowing for that potential. The second half of the word is, of course "able." This openness to wounding, in a playful moment, could therefore be construed as a capability, an asset.

And indeed it is. Choosing vulnerability implies that we have agency; we had a choice, after all. Being open to harm means that the part of ourselves that we are willing to expose, to open, must be very important to us. If it wasn't important, we could not be harmed by its destruction. Choosing to be vulnerable, therefore, means that we are exposing the most essential parts of ourselves, our truest being-ness.

Emotional vulnerability is therefore a tool, one among many, that is necessary to building a true healing community. Without it, we are not exposing our most essential selves, thereby cutting off the opportunity for deep relationship. Those deep relationships - with ourselves, our families and friends - are the hidden gift of emotional vulnerability. It is where we, in concert with others, cultivate our most essential selves. When we choose vulnerability, we are using our agency to ask for that gift of deep relationship, putting our power and attention behind a decision to grow and change on a deep level. The word heal is derived from a root meaning literally, "to make whole," and we cannot become whole if we leave out our most essential self.

Vulnerability isn't always chosen, though; it is also thrust upon us, as in our infancy. And the experience of vulnerability alone, chosen or no, is not in and of itself enough to build community. Think of all the times you were vulnerable and were treated poorly; those moments erode trust, another factor important for building a tribe. It is vulnerability met with love that leads to healing, and not vulnerability met with anything less.

You can empower yourself on your healing journey by using your emotional vulnerability when you think it will be met with love. Each time you do, you are watering the garden of your soul, building your community, and coming one step closer to healing your mind, body and soul.

Facebook Announcement

This past Friday, August 22 2014, I did something that was very scary:

I came out of the pelvic pain closet - on Facebook.

Some of you may not think that is such a big deal, seeing as I write a blog about pelvic pain for the whole world to see. But I dragged my feet about writing anything about it on Facebook. Somehow, writing about pelvic pain for strangers is easier than telling the vast circle of family, friends, acquaintances, and random people I took a workshop with once. 

I started using Facebook back when it was only for college students. It was a place to share a lot of things, a club whose select few members you handpicked. Then it opened to the rest of the population, and suddenly another generation - parents - joined the fray. Facebook went from being an extension of campus life to something that you edited, whether the content, the friends list, or both. Personally, I have given up on trying to keep Facebook the tight circle of real-life friends it once was, and have shifted to accepting requests I once would have balked at: people I haven't seen since the third grade, and yes, random people I took a workshop with once.

My list of Facebook friends is therefore an amorphous field comprised of people who see me in so many different ways. Most of them only know me in one context. They have known me since birth, as their niece, someone who will forever be younger and of another generation; they know me as the hazy memory of the girl they sat next to in the third grade; or maybe they know me as my body's movement, as a fellow yogi or dancer. Choosing one way to deliver intimate information across a past with so many pathways to human connection was a daunting task.

Coming out on Facebook doesn't only affect my digital life. Many of my Facebook friends are people who I will actually have to face in real life at some point, perhaps regularly at family get-togethers, or unexpectedly, in line at the grocery store. Whether at work, in a networking group, or across the Thanksgiving table, I am now the Pelvic Pain Lady, the story of my lady bits having been officially ushered into the realm of acceptable, indeed encouraged, topics of conversation. 

In the end for my Facebook post I chose video. I was honest, and direct, and to the point, reminding myself that by showing our vulnerabilities we can help others heal. Yes, there is a slice of me that is completely mortified that my private parts are no longer private. But there is also a part of me that is proud I am instigating the change I wish to see in the world.

So. I did it.

...Now my mom is asking when I will do an email blast.

Guest Post for Trudy Triumph

Hi all, I did a guest post for Trudy Triumph over at www.neurogenicbladder.me. She and I met at the BlogHer Conference a few weeks ago and bonded over the fact that we both blog about health problems that people find difficult to talk about. You can read the post, "Wellness Begins with We" here - check it out!

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Legacy

What is your life about?

Over the past decade, so much of my distress about being chronically ill stemmed not only from pain and fear of pain, but also from the fear that my life would be small, that I would not accomplish what I wished because of my limitations.

I recently heard an interview with a coach named Remy Chausse, who mentioned that our legacies can be a "beingness" instead of a "doingness;" that our gift to the world is not what we do, but how we do it.

I find in that little nugget of wisdom a great relief. A state of "being" is accessible to anyone, anywhere, while many types and ways of "doing" are restricted. I will never be a professional basketball player, or climb Mount Everest, but I can BE any way I want to be, and I can bring that wholly unique beingness to the things that I am able to do.

This concept lifts the question that plagues so many of us angsty Americans, "What should I do with my life?" Suddenly, finding the perfect job or spouse or living arrangement is not the goal, but rather showing up completely to whatever situation presents itself. This shift allows our need to control our external circumstances to fall away, while opening an easeful passage to attracting the structures that will most support us.

My life will therefore be as small or large as I choose, as disappointing or magnificent as I allow it to be. This notion is wonderfully comforting, satisfying my ambitious side while at the same time orienting me to what matters most in life: love. Being in line with my highest and best self.

No matter the ups and downs of your pelvic pain journey, I hope you remember or at least consider this idea. Yes, pelvic pain brings with it many losses, an erasure of some "doings," permanently or temporarily. But do not count among these losses your ability to live a rich, full, beautiful life. 

Healing is Easier when You Love Yourself

If you had asked me ten years ago if I loved myself, I would have said "Of course," and not given it much thought. Yet I have come to realize how little that was true.

Over the years, I have slowly noticed the many not-loving things I do and say to myself on a regular basis. Tracing back their origins, I see that these actions and thoughts were born from my upbringing, the culture I was raised in. Like most Americans, I was raised in a competitive environment. "Achieve, Succeed" was the mantra, and I was taught to push myself harder and farther, to excel, because nothing less was acceptable. Being okay was always another achievement away, tantalizingly close but forever out of reach. Accepting oneself in the moment seemed akin to failure - not only failing yourself, your family, your school, your community, but also God.

I took the mantra to heart and beat myself relentlessly. Years later, having left the religion of my birth, finished school, moved across the country, gone to hours of therapy, and adopted a new value system, the attitude remains. I am still learning how to quiet the incessant overseer of my mind, and listen to my higher self instead:

I am enough.

Exactly as I am today, with all my gifts and flaws, I am enough.

It has taken me a long time to realize embracing this attitude won't lead to atrophy. Quite the opposite. This change has redirected the energy I used to spend on anxiety and self-hate into the more pleasurable and productive activities of growing and learning, taking on new challenges and being ambitious.

And yet now and again I catch myself taking something as Truth that is not. "My work is not good enough," I might think, or "I don't measure up to so-and-so." I am grateful when I catch myself, because then I have the opportunity to correct the situation, amend it with love. "This work is excellent," "so-and-so has beautiful gifts to bring to the world and so do you."

Learning to love myself is a process that I will take the rest of my lifetime. And I am so glad to be doing it. 

As far as my background with pelvic pain goes, experiencing illness as someone who hates herself is much more difficult than experiencing illness as someone who loves herself. 

It is easier to look for help when you love yourself. It is easier to find and be a part of a community. It is easier to speak up for yourself at the doctor's office, to do your physical therapy exercises, to ice diligently when you love yourself. The whole process of healing becomes easier, more gentle through self-love.

Think of this post the next time you blame yourself for being sick, or beat yourself up for not getting better faster, or decide that you must be a loser because your illness prevents you from doing X. Take all of that frustrated energy and transform it, re-direct it with love.

We cannot change the facts of our illness, but we can endlessly transmute our response to it. That is where our power lies, our character lies; that is where we become who we want to be, regardless of the circumstances of our bodies.

When I look at who I have become through pelvic pain, I am very proud of myself. I have chosen to be tough, to be gentle, to never give up; I have chosen to be compassionate, to understand, to nurture.

I chose love.

What do you choose?