I’m a part of a learning community where we are working to increase our capacity to love ourselves, others, and God. It’s an interesting collection of people – a variety of careers, married and single, some from really great families and some who experienced unthinkable trauma in their childhood. We are straight and gay, we are republican and democrat, we are Christian and agnostic and perhaps a closet atheist. Most of us grew up in church and were in some ways wounded there.
One of the things that draws us together is a deep commitment to vulnerability as a pathway to learning to love. I believe that it is virtually impossible to grow in the capacity to love God, neighbors and self until and unless you vulnerably share yourself with others.
Most of us learned at a young age to wear masks. We pretended to be ok. When we were hurt, we were told to “shake it off” and thereby received the implicit message that telling the truth about our emotional woundedness was not ok. So, we learned to hide and pretend, often living with one external reality that was very different than our internal reality.
I experienced this in my young adult life. I was a rage-o-holic. Externally I was the pastor in a church and wore the mask of being a loving, generous, happy man. I kept my rage at bay for long periods of time, but then it would erupt. When it did, the impact was devastating.
Jesus summarizes all of his teaching in the command to love God and love others as you love yourself. He is referring to a kind of intimacy that is not possible when you are pretending to be something you are not.
In our community group we’ve created a safe space where people are encouraged to be authentic. For most of us that is a learned skill that has to be stepped into over time because in many places in our lives we are judged – some to the point of being cut off by key relationships. So, we’ve been programed by self, family, church and society at large to keep the mask on. One by-product of this is that we have the experience of not being known and understood. This results in a profound and pervasive sense of loneliness.
So, we’ve been learning to tell our individual stories in a vulnerable way.
We tell the truth about our past. For almost all of us our story includes success and failure. We have warm memories and we have memories of shame and guilt. It is a fearful and liberating experience to share these parts of our stories with others.
We also tell the truth about our dreams. The wounding of our past and the loneliness that results from not being able to talk about that has resulted in a loss of our dreams. Instead of living a life that is birthed in our passion and giftedness, we end up settling for a job that pays the bills. We end up leading a much smaller life than we are designed to live. Risking giving expression to our dreams is both a fearful and an empowering experience.
And we tell the truth about how we are currently taking responsibility now for finding healing from the wounding so that we can live into our dreams. These are authentic stories of the hard work that personal transformation requires.
We worked on each of the three parts of our story over several weeks and then in the final session, we each shared our whole story – in all of its pain and all of its glory.
Profoundly Vulnerable Storytelling Creates Space for Deep Connection
Here’s one story from the group that I have permission to tell. I’m going to call him Fred. He’s an attorney who had a great family of origin. If you just looked at the externals, his was a pretty charmed life – – – high school, college, law school, a beautiful wife, three great children, a successful career, and a leader in church and community life.
Here’s the rest of the story. In his hometown on weekends, all the boys went to the baseball field to play. The first two boys there were the team captains who chose their teams. Fred wasn’t a good athlete so after experiencing the humiliation of being the last one chosen several times, he determined to get there first. On the day this story happened, he arrived first and got to be team captain. He and the other boy who arrived second chose their teams and just as they were finishing up, another boy showed up. His presence meant there was an odd number so someone couldn’t play. The group decided that Fred couldn’t play since the last kid who arrived was a really good athlete.
Fred was devastated and humiliated. He began to gather up his equipment. His parents had money so Fred had the best equipment of anyone on the team. As he started to gather his stuff, a kid who Fred had counted as a friend and who was the best athlete in the group, said, “Wait, Fred, you aren’t leaving are you.” For a brief moment, Fred thought, “I’m wanted.” But then his friend said, “You need to stay because I want to use your bat.”
This experience was deeply wounding and shaped Fred’s life going forward. He told himself that he was not worthy, not lovable, not valuable in and of himself. It was his stuff that people wanted. For the rest of his life he wore a mask that hid this wound. He approached every relationship with a deep fear of being rejected. He learned to read the relationship signals and would do whatever it took to get you to like him.
Fred has a deep passion for justice and that is a part of his dream. But, he has not pursued that dream much because he spent most of his life just doing his job, making money, and pleasing people – and he has been profoundly lonely.
As Fred told his story, you could have heard a pin drop. Every person in the room was deeply connected to his pain and to his dream. There was a human connection that is so rare that it seemed like magic. As he finished telling his story, another person in the group said, “I have never felt more connected to you or loved you more than I do in this moment.”
This kind of storytelling is profoundly vulnerable – but it is in vulnerability that intimacy takes place. It might appear as weakness, but actually it requires bringing your very best self – the highest level of human courage that one can bring. In our group, as the stories are told, the wounds are beginning to be healed. As the wounds are healed, Fred begins to have more internal space to focus on his dreams.
That’s the amazing power of vulnerability.