Stop scouring people’s faces for evidence that you’re not enough. You will always find it because you’ve made that your goal. True belonging and self-worth are not goods; we don’t negotiate their valu...
Stillness is not about focusing on nothingness; it’s about creating a clearing. It’s opening up an emotionally clutter-free space and allowing ourselves to feel and think and dream and question.
Show me a woman who can hold space for a man in real fear and vulnerability, and I’ll show you a woman who’s learned to embrace her own vulnerability and who doesn’t derive her power or status from th...
People who wade into discomfort and vulnerability and tell the truth about their stories are the real badasses.
Not enough of us know how to sit in pain with others. Worse, our discomfort shows up in ways that can hurt people and reinforce their own isolation. I have started to believe that crying with stranger...
No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough. It’s going to bed at night thinking, Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that...
Neither one of us could really articulate how we felt until I heard Lamott referencing Paul Tillich and telling the audience, The opposite of faith is not doubt—it’s certainty. Steve and I didn’t leav...
MANIFESTO OF THE BRAVE AND BROKENHEARTED There is no greater threat to the critics and cynics and fearmongers Than those of us who are willing to fall Because we have learned how to rise With skinned...
Living with air pollution increases your odds of dying early by 5 percent. Living with obesity, 20 percent. Excessive drinking, 30 percent. And living with loneliness? It increases our odds of dying e...
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the ar...
In either case, if you come across an explanation of vulnerability that doesn’t include setting boundaries or being clear on intentions, proceed with caution. Vulnerability for vulnerability’s sake is...
In addition to the gremlins, another thing that gets in the way of meaningful work is the struggle to define who we are and what we do in an honest way. In a world that values the primacy of work, the...
If connection is the energy that surges between people, we have to remember that those surges must travel in both directions.
I remember a very tender moment from that year, when Steve and I were lying on the floor watching Ellen do a series of crazy, arm-flinging, and knee-slapping dances and tumbles. I looked at Steve and...
I remain inspired and transformed by something I learned from Harriet Lerner’s book The Dance of Connection.3 Dr. Lerner explains that we all have patterned ways of managing anxiety. Some of us respon...
I know I’m ready to give feedback when: I’m ready to sit next to you rather than across from you; I’m willing to put the problem in front of us rather than between us (or sliding it toward you); I’m r...
I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain. —JAMES A. BALDWIN
I don’t trust a theologian who dismisses the beauty of science or a scientist who doesn’t believe in the power of mystery.
I believe that what we regret most are our failures of courage, whether it’s the courage to be kinder, to show up, to say how we feel, to set boundaries, to be good to ourselves. For that reason, regr...
I always felt that someone, a long time ago, organized the affairs of the world into areas that made sense-catagories of stuff that is perfectible, things that fit neatly in perfect bundles. The world...