Quotes about Vulnerability

Can you tell me why people go to such lengths to hide their real selves? Or why I always behave differently when I'm in the company of others? Why do people have such little trust in one another? I know there must be a reason, but sometimes I think it's horrible that you can't confide in anyone, not even those closest to you.

It's an odd idea for someone like me to keep a diary; not only because i have never done so before, but because it seems to me that neither I -nor for that matter anyone else- will be interested in the unbosomings of a thirteen year old schoolgirl. Still, what does that matter? I want to write, but more than that, I want to bring out all kinds of things that lie burried deep in my heart.

Part of me loves and respects men so desperately, and part of me thinks they are so embarrassingly incompetent at life and in love. You have to teach them the very basics of emotional literacy. You have to teach them how to be there for you, and part of me feels tender toward them and gentle, and part of me is so afraid of them, afraid of any more violation.

Toni Morrison said, The function of freedom is to free someone else, and if you are no longer wracked or in bondage to a person or a way of life, tell your story. Risk freeing someone else. Not everyone will be glad that you did. Members of your family and other critics may wish you had kept your secrets. Oh, well, what are you going to do?

Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there.

It is a violation of trust to use your kids as caulking for the cracks in you.

You don't want to spend your time around people who make you hold your breath. You can't fill up when you're holding your breath. And writing is about filling up, filling up when you are empty, letting images and ideas and smells run down like water - just as writing is also about dealing with the emptiness.

Prayer is taking a chance that against all odds and past history, we are loved and chosen, and do not have to get it together before we show up.

But it was the singing that pulled me in and split me wide open.

As far as I can recall, none of the adults in my life ever once remembered to say, "Some people have a thick skin and you don't. Your heart is really open and that is going to cause pain, but that is an appropriate response to this world. The cost is high, but the blessing of being compassionate is beyond your wildest dreams. However, you're not going to feel that a lot in seventh grade. Just hang on.

Prayer is talking to something or anything with which we seek union, even if we are bitter or insane or broken. (In fact, these are probably the best possible conditions under which to pray.) Prayer is taking a chance that against all odds and past history, we are loved and chosen, and do not have to get it together before we show up. The opposite may be true: We may not be able to get it together until after we show up in such miserable shape.

I believe that when all si said and done, all you can do is to show up for someone in crisis, which seems so inadequate. But then when you do, it can radically change everything. Your there-ness, your stepping into a scared [person's] line of vision, can be life giving, because often everyone else is in hiding...