A few days ago I pulled the ACTION remedy REST to close the year of 2023. The card I pulled to open the new year was the VOICE remedy VULNERABILITY from Pleasure Alchemy.
As with the REST card, VULNERABILITY slipped into my hand with a sense of rightness. I knew before I turned it over that this was the card for us. I had the image of a door opening, bright and tender, with a soft new vista unfurling to reveal itself beyond. And yet, when I did turn the card over and finally saw what I’d pulled, I felt an immediate flare of discomfort and doubt.
In Pleasure Alchemy, there are four suits of remedies. These four suits cover four areas of life that I believe either encourage us or inhibit us in finding pleasure and taking joy in our lives. And the VOICE remedies, specifically, cover words—concepts—that might make pleasure challenging. I made the decision to include these remedies in the deck for this purpose: that we give voice to the fears and doubts we so often experience when seeking to live pleasurable, satisfying lives. And that in voicing these fears and doubts we begin the process of gently moving through and past them.
So, let’s accept the invitation. Let’s talk about vulnerability.
First, some clarification. As with most of my writing, I’m making distinctions here between the different linguistic uses of certain words. In this case, my use of vulnerability in Pleasure Alchemy is specifically referencing the usage of vulnerability as it refers to emotional vulnerability and how this contributes to a pleasurable life. So how might vulnerability in this context be important—I’d argue even necessary—for finding pleasure?
Now I’d like you to say the word aloud. Vulnerability.
What emotions arise when you do? Is there anxiety or uneasiness? Is there a sense of denial? Do you feel like you need to pull back and protect yourself? Is there even some tightness in your chest or throat? Why do you think this might be?
In order to find pleasure in life there needs to be a certain amount of surrender. There needs to be a willingness to expose oneself to life, and to all this may entail. Good things may happen and bad things may happen, but we will never know which might occur until we open ourselves and are willing to see what comes when we do.
This makes sense, doesn’t it? In this context, vulnerability is a good thing because it reminds us to be authentic and true to ourselves! It reminds us that if we want to be met with love by the world, we need to be willing to meet the world with love in return.
And love isn’t possible without honesty, openness, and, yes, vulnerability.
So why, oh why, does the word vulnerability so often fill us with uneasiness and discomfort?
In my opinion, the problem arises because most of us—whether unconsciously or not—associate vulnerability with those times in the past when we revealed our vulnerable selves to others and were denied or rejected. Now instead of being a framework for love and openness, vulnerability is the reason we are betrayed and hurt. The word vulnerability becomes entangled with the experience of sadness and pain and perceived worthiness or unworthiness. Thus we are given silent permission to use the risk of vulnerability as an excuse not to be open and honest and loving with ourselves and with others.
And we are given silent permission to close ourselves off from new beginnings.
So to me, this VULNERABILITY card is an invitation and a rallying cry to begin the New Year from a place of openness and honesty and with a willingness to embrace whatever may come. In any beginning there is always risk. In any sharing of oneself, there is always risk as well. But that doesn’t mean we cannot begin this New Year by sharing ourselves honestly and wholeheartedly with the world that emerges to meet us.
I know you’ve been hurt in the past. I know you’ve been betrayed and disappointed. But there is such great love and such great strength in rising up and trying again, isn’t there? The future is not the past. What a gift this is! Can you be brave and show the world who you really are? Can you risk being vulnerable?
So, if you can this year:
Do the important work and say the important words even when you aren’t sure how things might go or how you might be received or judged.
Be wholly true to yourself and honor and embrace all parts of yourself in whatever ways you can (I know this can be so, so hard! Be kind to yourself).
Spend some time exploring who in your life you can be vulnerable with and then commit to making this journey together with them.
And trust yourself to be able to protect you just in case vulnerability does end in sadness or disappointment (let’s be honest, it sometimes will).
Lastly, I’ll leave you with the question that’s been on my mind pretty much nonstop the last few days since I pulled this card:
Can I be vulnerable with myself?
Because this is the core of all my maundering. This is the very crux of the matter.
This is the center of me and it’s the center of you, as well.
Because true vulnerability starts with us being open and loving and vulnerable with ourselves, first. Can we do that this year? Can we be a safe space for ourselves? Can we give ourselves unconditional love and support? What might this look like?
Only one way to find out.
I love you, brave birds. Happy New Year.
Thanks, Maude. It's a good way to start the year--with openness, embracing what comes. (By the way, it was a pleasure meeting you Christmas Eve with Robin.)
Synchronisitically, it seems, now that I've read your New Year's offering I am reminded that I was touched by the same thought as I sat ruminating on New Year's eve, by the fire in my living room. I was reading and came upon a beautiful phrase, from Novalis, a favorite that I often quote in my writing. It came to me through a friend who crossed the threshold about a year ago, Chris Bamford. I was reading "For the Love of Literature," by Christi MacKaye Barnes (who I never met), the mother of my dear friend John Barnes. Chris was the editor-in-chief of SteinerBooks, and wrote the introduction to this book. In it he says:
"We do not think first of the heart--or love--when we think of the study of literature. But that, in fact, is where one must begin. For, without the painful openness to experience that these demand, art can neither be created nor understood. I mean here love in the sense that the German romantic poet Novalis meant it when he wrote, "to love is to hold the wound always open."
So, words about vulnerability came to me twice, just before the turn of the year and just after--"to love is to hold the wound always open." I'll end with a THANK YOU to Maude and the short, lovely poem that follows the text quoted above, from Christy Barnes herself, on the gift of vulnerability--worthily expressed...
Chris continues: "Or, in the words of Christy MacKay Barnes:"
A wound awoke me,
Opened the lids that lie closed
Over the eyes of the longing
That lives in the sleeping soul
To be whole;
And a word woke me
To reach
Into the wounds of the world--
And the wounds
Became speech.