Vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage.
We’re a nation of exhausted and over-stressed adults raising over-scheduled children.
Ads sell a great deal more than products. They sell values, images, and concepts of success and worth.
Vulnerability is not knowing victory or defeat, it’s understanding the necessity of both; it’s engaging. It’s being all in.
The dark does not destroy the light; it defines it. It’s our fear of the dark that casts our joy into the shadows.
There’s nothing more daring than showing up, putting ourselves out there and letting ourselves be seen.
The universe is not short on wake-up calls. We’re just quick to hit the snooze button.
Courage is telling our story, not being immune to criticism.
When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated. This is why we sometimes attack who they are, which is far more hurtful than addressing a behavior or a choice.
Who we are and how we engage with the world are much stronger predictors of how our children will do than what we know about parenting.
Nothing has transformed my life more than realizing that it’s a waste of time to evaluate my worthiness by weighing the reaction of the people in the stands.
Hope is a function of struggle.
Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.
If you put shame in a petri dish, it needs three ingredients to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence, and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in the petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can’t survive.
Live-tweeting your bikini wax is not vulnerability. Nor is posting a blow-by-blow of your divorce. That’s an attempt to hot-wire connection. But you can’t cheat real connection. It’s built up slowly. It’s about trust and time.
Lean into the discomfort of the work.
I carry a small sheet of paper in my wallet that has written on it the names of people whose opinions of me matter. To be on that list, you have to love me for my strengths and struggles.
I don’t just want someone who says they love me; I want someone who practices that love for me every day.
Vulnerability is the core of shame and fear and our struggle for worthiness, but it appears that it’s also the birthplace of joy, of creativity, of belonging, of love.
The one thing that keeps us out of connection is our fear that we’re not worthy of connection.