When I was younger, I was extremely vulnerable. 

Expressing my emotions and allowing them to flow naturally came easily, and when I was open during these moments, I felt connected to my people. 

However, as the years rolled off the calendar, and I went through more life experiences, it became tiring to display that side of myself. I would often suppress my emotions and chose not to be vulnerable with many of my family members, some of the men I dated, and even some of my closest friends. 

Expressing feelings, showing emotions and sharing our thoughts was not very common amongst my people. There was no safe space within my circle to address someone’s emotional and/or mental health. Now, this isn’t because my people were assholes, it was simply because they did not know how to facilitate this environment for the ones that they loved. 

Subsequently, as time passed, the person I was becoming wasn’t me at all. 

I learned about my change and why I was changing in a therapy session.

I would like to share this moment with you.

One day during a session with my therapist, he had pushed me so deep into my subconscious mind, an unknown place, and I couldn’t help but sob uncontrollably from everything that I was learning about myself. 

I like to call this moment the subconscious meeting the conscious. 

I was crying so much that I used half his box of Kleenex, and my eyebrows slowly began to fade away. I went into the session looking like a snack and came out looking like last week’s leftovers!!

When I tell you this session was heavy –it was heavy.

During my session, I learned that a beautiful part of my innate self—my ability to be vulnerable and the one way I used the most to connect with the ones I loved— was dying.

My therapist helped me to see that while my tuff lady persona was a part of who I was— it was not WHO I was. 

He made me understand how my public façade masked my fear of being hurt, and as a result, impacted the communication I had in the last relationship I was in at the time. He actually informed me that it sounded like I met a male version of myself, and he was probably right. This session pushed me to explore my experience with vulnerability in all the different relationships I had with the people in my life. 

I grew to find a deeper understanding of myself in the process of exploring my connection with vulnerability. I learned that vulnerability is what it takes to connect with people. This explained why I felt closer to the ones I loved as a child whenever I would be vulnerable with them. I also learned that if I’m vulnerable and I don’t connect with the person or thing, it just not for me in that moment.

I believe the most rewarding part of being vulnerable is the access to freeing your mind on a consistent basis. 

I could write more, but instead, I will continue to explore this topic in the future again. 

Reason being: the other day I asked on Instagram, “Do you struggle to be vulnerable in relationships, 70% of the voter said, “yes”, and 30% of the voters said “no”. 

There is definitely a need to explore this topic further , and I hope to able to shed some more light on this important subject! 

K.G