Finding Strength in Vulnerability

Prioritizing Mutual Vulnerability in Relationships

I did a written exercise this summer for one of my therapy sessions that required me to come up with a list of all the things I would like to do in my life while being hyper-vigilant of the fact that absolutely NO kind of censor applied to that list. I could wish for and write anything, no matter how absurd or impossible it sounded. It made me wonder that how different my writing outside my journal and therapy sessions would be if I incorporated the same freedom to it.

So tonight, I am going to write. Write not for an audience but for myself. Not for someone’s benefit but to be real. Not to bring an Aha! spiritual moment by quoting the Scripture but to do justice to the human reality of life. To not care that I am Muslim and disregard the need to explain myself for the unwanted burden of guilt that has been dumped on my back due to those who claim to share my faith. To be fearless and dismissive of the judgment that comes along with the courage of opening up.

Tonight, I will write to be vulnerable.

One of my teachers told me a month ago, “Trust those around you. Don’t let them lose out the opportunity of leaning their shoulder to you.”

Despite this advice, I have spent the past few weeks feeling lost, alone and to a certain degree, resentful. I was helping at a two-week long academic retreat and although I was surrounded by 70+ people from morning to evening, I felt so pathetically lonely. Having my family go through an eviction and not being able to talk about it to even a single soul in my vicinity was not only painful but torturous! I somehow felt that everyone around me was either pretending that their lives were perfect and even if they were not, most people refused to take off their masks leaving me in a world where it felt that there was something only wrong with me and nobody else.

I struggled to find connection with those who I call my peers because friendships in my eyes take more than superficialities. Trust requires vulnerability and if vulnerability is not mutual, I find it impossible to dive into relationships because of my preemptive conclusion that such relationships would not hit the depths of an infinitely strong friendship outside of the in-the-moment interactions. And that, fortunately or unfortunately, has been the truth. At least in the past few years.

Hence, I have been consistently asking myself: Am I wrong in expecting vulnerability to be reciprocated? And am I wrong in making it as a criteria for my relationships and friendships?

After chasing tails, I figured that I am not. At least not for myself and the people I choose to allow into my life.

According to Brené Brown, “whole-hearted” individuals fully embrace vulnerability.
“They believe that what makes them vulnerable makes them beautiful. They don’t talk about vulnerability being comfortable, nor do they really talk about it being excruciating. They just talk about it being necessary.”

Vulnerability requires courage. It takes strength to be writing what I am writing tonight and it was vulnerability that helped me find peace eventually.

I gathered the courage to make myself vulnerable outside of my online community. Some people did not reciprocate my vulnerability, resulting in me immediately retreating to my tight-walled shell. While with some, strangers mostly, I got entrusted back with their inner cores. Together, we trusted and formed new friendships that I believe will last for life. My travels to Pennsylvania to see my best friend of 13+ years and her newborn only confirmed that our shared vulnerability has kept us going all these years despite the highs and lows of life.

The reality behind this trip was to regain my sanity by seeing someone who understood me and it was only possible by monetary contributions of certain individuals without whom the fancy galore of #soletravel would not have been possible.

And most importantly, during the arduous month, I met a couple of individuals for the first time who had been familiar with my writing online. They helped me believe that it was my vulnerable writing that helped them relate to my struggles even years before we finally met.

They helped me realize 3 main things:

• I am not a victim but a warrior fighting multiple battles.
• I need to get back to writing courageously and not be afraid of the consequences that follow after making one’s own self vulnerable to the world.
• I need to find strength in vulnerability because to be vulnerable is to be braver than everybody else as not everyone is capable of it.

So here is to deeper connections based on mutual vulnerability. And that shall be my criteria for relationships in 2016.

And I too will conclude how Brené Brown concluded her TED talk:

“I’m just so grateful, because to feel this vulnerable means I’m alive.”

So who else is ready to feel alive? I know I am.

Are you?