[00:00:41] Hello, friends and welcome to the Curiously Wise Podcast. I'm Laurin Wittig, I'm your host. And today I'm going to talk about something on my own. It’s the first time I don't have a guest with me and I've been kind of putting this off because it feels a little uncomfortable to be here by myself. It's very easy for me to have a conversation with someone, but it's a little more stressful to have to do it on my own.
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[00:01:38] And so I'm just going to start with a quote of hers in her book, “Daring Greatly”. She describes vulnerability as uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure. It's that unstable feeling we get when we step out of our comfort zone or do something that forces us to loosen control. So that pretty much explains how I was feeling this morning when I was
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[00:02:20] Maybe I'm not inspiring enough to do this on my own. Maybe I'm not smart enough, which is really weird because I'm very smart and I know that. Also, it's just a lot of responsibility because when I'm working with a guest, when we're having an interview, we have collaborated before we come on about what's one of the topics that we want to talk about.
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[00:03:07] …the word vulnerability really meant at the time. But I've been known to be very emotionally right in your face. So a lot of times it's because I express myself emotionally. That's being vulnerable as far as other people are concerned because they're afraid to do that. And so for me, it's something that comes pretty naturally.
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[00:03:50] And I still get a little emotional when I think about this story. I was 21 years old. Just graduated from college. And we're just about two, I think. And I was basically assigned by my mom and brother a job. And that job was to, I don't want to use the word confront. But to have a conversation with my father who was an alcoholic. And we had all been kind of in that denial, there's this something called the merry-go-round of denial and alcoholism, and it takes somebody to step off the merry-go-round to change the dynamic.
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[00:04:45] and I was selected to be the one to talk to my dad. Now we would call it an intervention, but it was really conversation. And so I said to him, in tears, I'm getting teary now. I said to him, dad, I know you're an alcoholic. I've been learning about that and the effect it has on me and our family and on you and your health.
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[00:05:30] Because it was the safest place with my father. And you never knew because it depended on if he'd been drinking or not. If he wasn't drinking, he was a sweetheart. If he was drinking, he could be quite explosive. Not physically, but verbally and emotionally. And so I figured If I told them this in public, then it was going to be a safer space for me.
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[00:06:12] I had to get courageous about it because I was you know, considering, well, maybe now's not the time to do this. And then I just realized that no, I have screwed up my courage. I have committed to doing this. Dad is here. The time is now I'm going to do it. Probably the most courage I've ever had to pull out of myself.
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[00:06:41] And so proud of him still. okay. This is what I am like when I'm feeling very vulnerable.
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[00:06:51] you can see, I wear my emotions on my sleep. That what I learned from that experience was first of all, how much courage it takes to be vulnerable, especially in public. And especially with somebody who you love, but you're afraid of. Sorry, I have to ground myself here for a moment.
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[00:07:36] Very exposed. So it's a gift because if we allow ourselves to feel this way in a way that other people get to experience. So me sharing my story with you is one way. You're going to essentially modeling behavior for them, modeling that it's okay to be vulnerable. It's okay to feel that way.
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[00:08:21] Even just in front of a parent is very public. That allows other people to, first of all, understand that they're not alone in those feelings. And that is huge. Maybe one of the biggest lessons I learned from being an Alanon was that I wasn't the only one feeling the way I was feeling about the alcoholic and my family and the codependent parent and the way I was impacted by it.
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[00:09:08] In that place. That's where I first heard that I was being vulnerable. I was leading it. It was my circle. it was my baby. I ran it. I facilitated it. I am the one that brought it to life. We co-created the circle as people came into it, but, I was the seed. And so I was always the one who decided what we were going to talk about that week, because the way I structured it, the big piece of it was that we talked about something important.
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[00:09:57] Here in town where I live, I was the family member, her husband and I were the ones who were responsible for her. When things got bad, she tended to call me and expect me to come rescue her. And, you know, I wasn't gonna do that for a lot of reasons. Mostly it was in her best interest to stay where she was.
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[00:10:34] I cried. I had a hard time expressing myself. I often would introduce it and get a little teary and ask somebody else to answer the question or done. Take up the conversation for a little bit and, and share their experience. Well, what I learned from being told by those wonderful wise women, how much they appreciated my vulnerability is that it did give them permission to also be vulnerable.
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[00:11:18] If it is to you, it is to you. And so that's where I first learned that this was a gift to others. It was a gift to me because it was cathartic. I could be vulnerable there, but also to them, because then they got to experience their own vulnerability and practice being courageous and share. And it really is.
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[00:12:00] So I want to reclaim vulnerability as a real powerful aspect of ourselves and we need to make it okay for people to be vulnerable again. So that's a lot of why I want to share this today. So I want to ask you to think about where you feel most vulnerable. And for me, like I started with, I was resisting something I wanted to do and I've interviewed a number of people now. This is not my first go round on A podcast episode. But it is the first solo and I was by myself and I didn't have anybody to bounce things off of.
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[00:13:01] And I, you know, I, I have no problem talking to people about this stuff. Sometimes get a little teary, but that's okay. So I just want to invite you to think about where you have places of resistance in your life. Where you have places of outright fear in your life and dig into it a little bit, ask yourself questions.
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[00:13:51] I did that this morning too. I was like, I, okay. I figured out I'm feeling vulnerable. I understand why I'm feeling vulnerable at what I don't understand is why I'm allowing it to stop me from sitting down and recording this podcast. And so I just invite you to do that. It's a really powerful way to learn about yourself.
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[00:14:55] Curiosity actually is what broke me through and I'm just putting this together now. Curiosity is what broke me through my vulnerability today because I asked myself, okay, I know I'm resisting this. I don't want to resist it. I just want to sit down and do this. I already had the topic I had made notes.
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[00:15:48] And do you have any tools to get through that? For me, meditating was a good one. Journaling was a good one. And just talking about here is actually good because it is reinforcing for me that I did the right thing. I asked the questions I dug into it. I took some time to figure it out so that I didn't sit down nervous to do this.
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[00:16:34] No. Okay. There is something going on here. What is it? Can I name it? What tools do I have to help me process it, to help me pass through it and out the other side. And so in this way, even this little bit of mild vulnerability, I was feeling this morning. Becomes a chance for me to practice both understanding my own emotions, those resistances, that show up all the time.
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[00:17:29] I hope that something in this resonates with you, I hope that something in this gives you an aha moment and. Unfortunately, I don't yet know how to get comments from the podcast, but you can certainly go to my website. Heartlightjoy.com and there's contact information there and you can drop me an email and I would love to continue the conversation with you.
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[00:18:17] So I will be on Wisdom by mid-July. I hope to be on there at least a couple of times a week at regular times. So people can come and find me there and I will update you on that in a future podcast episodes. I invite you to subscribe to my podcast. If you haven't already, we come out every week on Tuesday, mostly we've been doing interviews, but I am now thinking I'm going to do some more solo ones.
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[00:19:06] So I hope that you have a lovely day. I hope that you are curious and easy on yourself in these moments of vulnerability, but that you also perhaps now have a few more ways of looking at vulnerability and are willing to practice sharing in public and public can be one person. So from my heart to yours, have a lovely day and I will see you next time.
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[00:20:00] So you don't miss future fabulous conversations. And if you had any ahas, please share them in a review so we can continue to pay forward the unique wisdom we all have. If you want to know more about me or my intuitive energy healing practice, please head over to my website. www.heartlightjoy.com.
