[00:00:00] Laurin: Welcome to the curiously wise podcast. I'm your host Laurin Wittig. This podcast is all about women supporting women, mind, body, and spirit. It's a place where we will honor, celebrate and share women's natural and experiential wisdom through curiosity provoking conversations, shared stories and tips we've all gathered along this journey. I invite you to join in the fun as we uncover the unique wisdom, we each carry within us. Ready? Let's get curious.
[00:00:41] Hello, friends and welcome to the Curiously Wise Podcast. I'm Laurin Wittig, I'm your host. And today I'm going to talk about something on my own. It’s the first time I don't have a guest with me and I've been kind of putting this off because it feels a little uncomfortable to be here by myself. It's very easy for me to have a conversation with someone, but it's a little more stressful to have to do it on my own.
[00:01:14] And so I started to dig into why I was doing that. Cause that's what I like to do. I like to say, okay, so what's going on. Really? I do this with myself and my clients, but I realized that I just was feeling vulnerable. I was feeling well, let me put it this way. Bernay Brown is a woman who's done a lot of research on the emotion of vulnerability.
[00:01:38] And so I'm just going to start with a quote of hers in her book, “Daring Greatly”. She describes vulnerability as uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure. It's that unstable feeling we get when we
step out of our comfort zone or do something that forces us to loosen control. So that pretty much explains how I was feeling this morning when I was
[00:02:00] contemplating doing my first solo podcast episode. And so I started to dig into that a little bit. And one of the things I realized is I was really afraid of being judged by others as maybe not being qualified to be a solo podcaster instead of just an interviewer that maybe I wasn't wise enough to do this on my own.
[00:02:20] Maybe I'm not inspiring enough to do this on my own. Maybe I'm not smart enough, which is really weird because I'm very smart and I know that. Also, it's just a lot of responsibility because when I'm working with a guest, when we're having an interview, we have collaborated before we come on about what's one of the topics that we want to talk about.
[00:02:41] And so it's more of a co-creation kind of experience. This one is just me and my guides. And so that's why I feel like vulnerable and I thought, well, great. I feel vulnerable. Let's talk about vulnerability today. And this isn't my first go round with vulnerability. I know it won't be my last and I have been told in the past that my vulnerability was actually kind of a superpower and I didn't even understand what…
[00:03:07] …the word vulnerability really meant at the time. But I've been known to be very emotionally right in your face. So a lot of times it's because I express myself emotionally. That's being vulnerable as far as other people are concerned because they're afraid to do that. And so for me, it's something that comes pretty naturally.
[00:03:27] And, I'm not always grateful for that. But it is something that I have wanted to dig into, because I feel like it's kind of a superpower, it's kind of a gift. So let's talk a little bit about how I came to those conclusions. And one of the things that I want to share with you is probably the moment of my biggest vulnerability.
[00:03:50] And I still get a little emotional when I think about this story. I was 21 years old. Just graduated from college. And we're just about two, I think. And I was basically assigned by my mom and brother a job. And that job was to, I don't want to use the word confront. But to have a conversation with my father who was an alcoholic. And we had all been kind of in that denial, there's this something called the merry-go-round of denial and alcoholism, and it takes somebody to step off the merry-go-round to change the dynamic.
[00:04:30] And I had done that. I'd been working with what eventually became an adult children of alcoholics group, but it was at Brown University, one of the deans ran it. And so I had been getting in touch with my own feelings about this, and I had talked to my mother and my brother about it.
[00:04:45] and I was selected to be the one to talk to my dad. Now we would call it an intervention, but it was really conversation. And so I said to him, in tears, I'm getting teary now. I said to him, dad, I know you're an alcoholic. I've been learning about that and the effect it has on me and our family and on you and your health.
[00:05:09] And I really want you to get some help. Mom has arranged for the insurance to pay for it. My brother has arranged for a place where you can go to rehab and we would really like you to do this. Took longer to say than that, but that was the gist of the conversation. And I did it in the middle of a restaurant.
[00:05:30] Because it was the safest place with my father. And you never knew because it depended on if he'd been drinking or not. If he wasn't drinking, he was a sweetheart. If he was drinking, he could be quite explosive. Not physically, but verbally and emotionally. And so I figured If I told them this in public, then it was going to be a safer space for me.
[00:05:50] Because he wouldn't want to necessarily show that side of himself in such a public way. And it turned out that they sat us right next to the bar right next to the front door, instead of in the dining room. I don't know why I'd never seen that table using that restaurant before, but it put us in the most public place you could be in that restaurant to have this conversation and.
[00:06:12] I had to get courageous about it because I was you know, considering, well, maybe now's not the time to do this. And then I just realized that no, I have screwed up my courage. I have committed to doing this. Dad is here. The time is now I'm going to do it. Probably the most courage I've ever had to pull out of myself.
[00:06:32] And he was great and he ended up going to rehab and he ended up being dry. Being sober for 20 years before he died.
[00:06:41] And so proud of him still. okay. This is what I am like when I'm feeling very vulnerable.
[00:06:49] what I want to say now is
[00:06:51] you can see, I wear my emotions on my sleep. That what I learned from that experience was first of all, how much courage it takes to be vulnerable, especially in public. And especially with somebody who you love, but you're afraid of. Sorry, I have to ground myself here for a moment.
[00:07:10]So being vulnerable is actually a really big gift that we give to other people and to ourselves, obviously to ourselves, because we can change lives by allowing ourselves to feel this overwhelming resistance or fear or uncertainty and exposure, a lot of exposure. That's what I'm feeling right now.
[00:07:36] Very exposed. So it's a gift because if we allow ourselves to feel this way in a way that other people get to experience. So me sharing my story with you is one way. You're going to essentially modeling behavior for them, modeling that it's okay to be vulnerable. It's okay to feel that way.
[00:07:58] It's okay to let everybody know that you're feeling that way. I don't have much choice. I get very teary. But it's this gift that we give to them because by modeling that behavior and by allowing yourself to feel it fully. And experience it. And in public, I know this is pretty public. That restaurant was very public.
[00:08:21] Even just in front of a parent is very public. That allows other people to, first of all, understand that they're not alone in those feelings. And that is huge. Maybe one of the biggest lessons I learned from being an Alanon was that I wasn't the only one feeling the way I was feeling about the alcoholic and my family and the codependent parent and the way I was impacted by it.
[00:08:47] So sharing that vulnerability is a huge gift that you give to others, allowing yourself to feel it as a gift to give to yourself. And it does have a ripple effect. Okay. So here's, here's something that I learned in the Wise Woman Circle that I ran for two years before the pandemic and hope to run again very soon.
[00:09:08] In that place. That's where I first heard that I was being vulnerable. I was leading it. It was my circle. it was my baby. I ran it. I facilitated it. I am the one that brought it to life. We co-created the circle as people came into it, but, I was the seed. And so I was always the one who decided what we were going to talk about that week, because the way I structured it, the big piece of it was that we talked about something important.
[00:09:39] Something that we maybe didn't get to talk to people about a lot. And so we had a wide variety of conversations. I was going through a particularly hard part in my life. During those two years, my mother who was a narcissist and was getting deeper and deeper into dementia as well.
[00:09:57] Here in town where I live, I was the family member, her husband and I were the ones who were responsible for her. When things got bad, she tended to call me and expect me to come rescue her. And, you know, I wasn't gonna do that for a lot of reasons. Mostly it was in her best interest to stay where she was.
[00:10:15] So all of that was going on in my life when I founded this circle. And for the two years that it ran. And so most of what I needed to talk about was what I was experiencing. And so I got to choose the topic, but it also meant that because the topic was so visceral for me it means I got teary.
[00:10:34] I cried. I had a hard time expressing myself. I often would introduce it and get a little teary and ask somebody else to answer the question or done. Take up the conversation for a little bit and, and share their experience. Well, what I learned from being told by those wonderful wise women, how much they appreciated my vulnerability is that it did give them permission to also be vulnerable.
[00:11:01] It gave them the feeling of being in a space where that was acceptable, it was okay to be vulnerable, that nobody was going to judge you. Nobody was going to say, why are you crying? You got nothing to cry about, which I heard a lot as a child. Don't get so emotional. It's, you know, it's not that big a deal.
[00:11:18] If it is to you, it is to you. And so that's where I first learned that this was a gift to others. It was a gift to me because it was cathartic. I could be vulnerable there, but also to them, because then they got to experience their own vulnerability and practice being courageous and share. And it really is.
[00:11:40] It takes a lot of courage to be vulnerable because you do put yourself in a position that in our culture and I'm sure many others, but here in the US it's seen as weakness. It's seen as seriously weakness. And if men are vulnerable, what do they call it? You know, you're being, you know, such a baby, you're being a little girl which then means that women are better.
[00:12:00] So I want to reclaim vulnerability as a real powerful aspect of ourselves and we need to make it okay for people to be vulnerable again. So that's a lot of why I want to share this today. So I want to ask you to think about where you feel most vulnerable. And for me, like I started with, I was resisting something I wanted to do and I've interviewed a number of people now. This is not my first go round on A podcast episode. But it is the first solo and I was by myself and I didn't have anybody to bounce things off of.
[00:12:40] I started to really dig into that and that's where I discovered that, oh, I'm feeling vulnerable. Naming it allowed me then to dig into it better and understand it better and say to myself, okay. In the grand scheme of things. This is no big deal. I can do this. I've been enjoying being a host on this podcast for a while now.
[00:13:01] And I, you know, I, I have no problem talking to people about this stuff. Sometimes get a little teary, but that's okay. So I just want to invite you to think about where you have places of resistance in your life. Where you have places of outright fear in your life and dig into it a little bit, ask yourself questions.
[00:13:25] Why am I resisting? What is it about this experience that I'm feeling unsettled by or I'm feeling fearful about? Or I feel like I'm not worthy of, or I don't have enough experience for or knowledge for, or I may be judged badly by myself or by others. Just dig into that a little bit, ask yourself those questions, maybe journal about it.
[00:13:51] I did that this morning too. I was like, I, okay. I figured out I'm feeling vulnerable. I understand why I'm feeling vulnerable at what I don't understand is why I'm allowing it to stop me from sitting down and recording this podcast. And so I just invite you to do that. It's a really powerful way to learn about yourself.
[00:14:12] To understand where you are vulnerable. And maybe to just embrace that maybe to just allow yourself to feel the fields, to be uncomfortable, to take the risk. I have no idea how this, that podcast episode has got to end up sounding, but I'm hoping. That it is coherent and that you have found some interesting things about vulnerability and maybe you've learned something, maybe I've made you curious because of course, Curiously Wise, I love curiosity.
[00:14:55] Curiosity actually is what broke me through and I'm just putting this together now. Curiosity is what broke me through my vulnerability today because I asked myself, okay, I know I'm resisting this. I don't want to resist it. I just want to sit down and do this. I already had the topic I had made notes.
[00:15:14]It was not a big deal in terms of effort, but I still was resisting. So I got curious, why am I resisting? What am I feeling? What is it that I'm holding back about? And so that's where curiosity really comes in as a tool to figure out what the vulnerability is, what aspect of that vulnerable space you are most strongly experiencing.
[00:15:48] And do you have any tools to get through that? For me, meditating was a good one. Journaling was a good one. And just talking about here is actually good because it is reinforcing for me that I did the right thing. I asked the questions I dug into it. I took some time to figure it out so that I didn't sit down nervous to do this.
[00:16:13] I came to it from a place of peace and confidence and so that's, that's where the curiosity is an amazing tool. It's, it's really a great tool. It requires you to open your mind and open your heart. And maybe to be a little more gentle with yourself. If you get curious as opposed to going, gosh, why am I doing I'm so stupid or what the hell is wrong with me?
[00:16:34] No. Okay. There is something going on here. What is it? Can I name it? What tools do I have to help me process it, to help me pass through it and out the other side. And so in this way, even this little bit of mild vulnerability, I was feeling this morning. Becomes a chance for me to practice both understanding my own emotions, those resistances, that show up all the time.
[00:17:01] I'm terrible about resisting things that I want to do. And I don't always understand why. And I don't always remember to stop and ask, but I did that this morning. And now that's giving me another example for myself of how I can accept vulnerability and I can understand the aspects of it that I'm experiencing in that moment and how I can work through it, to do something I love doing like hosting this podcast.
[00:17:29] I hope that something in this resonates with you, I hope that something in this gives you an aha moment and. Unfortunately, I don't yet know how to get comments from the podcast, but you can certainly go to my website. Heartlightjoy.com and there's contact information there and you can drop me an email and I would love to continue the conversation with you.
[00:17:52] I will be on a new app soon. I'm on it now, but not very often, the app is called Wisdom and it's actually been set up so that we can have sort of a social space for podcasters and other mentors and coaches. To talk to people who otherwise we have sort of a one-way conversation. And if you've listened to any of my other podcast episodes, you know, I love having conversations.
[00:18:17] So I will be on Wisdom by mid-July. I hope to be on there at least a couple of times a week at regular times. So people can come and find me there and I will update you on that in a future podcast episodes. I invite you to subscribe to my podcast. If you haven't already, we come out every week on Tuesday, mostly we've been doing interviews, but I am now thinking I'm going to do some more solo ones.
[00:18:44] And that's where, especially if you have any topics that you would really like to have me discuss, have me share my experience around them, then please, please let me know, go to my website again. Heartlightjoy.com and find the contact menu. And I would love to have a conversation with you and conversation here too.
[00:19:06] So I hope that you have a lovely day. I hope that you are curious and easy on yourself in these moments of vulnerability, but that you also perhaps now have a few more ways of looking at vulnerability and are willing to practice sharing in public and public can be one person. So from my heart to yours, have a lovely day and I will see you next time.
[00:19:36] Thank you so much for joining us today on Curiously Wise, I hope you found a nugget of wisdom that resonates with you. Perhaps it brings comfort or strength, or simply the peace that comes from knowing you aren't alone in your experience, or perhaps it illuminates the wisdom already within you. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe.
[00:20:00] So you don't miss future fabulous conversations. And if you had any ahas, please share them in a review so we can continue to pay forward the unique wisdom we all have. If you want to know more about me or my intuitive energy healing practice, please head over to my website. www.heartlightjoy.com.
[00:20:21] Curiously Wise is a team effort. I am grateful for the skill and enthusiasm, Arlene Membrot, our producer, and Sam Wittig, our audio engineer, bring to this collaboration. Our music is Where The Light Is by Lemon Music Studio. I'm Laurin Wittig. Please join me again next week for another episode of Curiously Wise. From my heart to yours, may your life be filled with love, light, joy, and of course, curiosity.