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Lately, I have been, shall we say, not particularly well. Life doesn’t stop if you’re not exactly at top functioning, however, and so the other day I was attempting to go about life by walking into a shop. The lady at the counter stopped, looked at me, and told me I was very pale.
‘That is my usual state!’ I said, grinning, trying to deflect.
She was having none of it. ‘Do you want to sit down?’
And, after a bit of protesting, I realised that, yes, I was feeling crumby, and I rather did want to sit down, and maybe powering through wasn’t a good idea.
It’s hard to acknowledge moments of vulnerability when we are told that vulnerability renders you less than. This is particularly so when your vulnerability is extended, and feels like it’s eating you up from the inside. But powering through is more damaging, because the force of it erodes you, and because it doesn’t leave you room to acknowledge the true state of things. Moments of acknowledging each others’ vulnerability are moments of acknowledging the humanity in us all. And it’s those moments that encourage you to get what you need. I had a much better day after that than I’ve had for a fair while.
What a lovely woman to not only recognise that you were not at your best, but to offer assistance as well. I love these moments. They can restore some of my lost faith in humanity.
I hope that your health improves.
It is, all the time, now. Thank you :).
It is from my vulnerability–especially extended periods of it–that I have learned the most about strength. And about how much we need understanding from one another, and from ourselves. http://elizabethhallmagill.wordpress.com/2011/06/09/my-body-electric/
Good for you for recognizing the need to slow down–that’s not easy in a world where everything tells us to speed up.
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I cannot find my old blog entry for you, but I had a profound realisation around vulnerability a couple of years ago. I’d always treated it as the space that was only safe to be in where I felt safe. And then it clicked, standing in the front of a room in a kind of sharing/coming out experience that happened quite unexpectedly. I realised in a heart-deep way that vulnerability was far from the weakness I’d associated with, that it was a key to strength. Part of the realisation was that, if I was myself, vulnerable and genuine to the best of my ability… then nothing about me could be used against me as secret knowledge and shame. It was very counter-intuitive to how I’d previously engaged.
But there was a freedom and a mental weightlessness that was knowing I was my whole self and no one could use it against me through secrecy or lashing out at perceived weakness ever again. It’s made a significant difference to how I engage with experiences, situations with new people and my own groundedness and ‘I don’t need your approval’ness. Not a universal truth, but a personal truth I’ve found increasingly true and important to me. Others with different experiences with structural oppression etc may find their experience of this rather difference and so I acknowledge that I am definitely in some ways speaking with privilege – or at the least an expectation that I will be accorded respect and free from harm (even if it doesn’t quite happen so cleanly that way every single time).