Nothing silences us more effectively than shame.
Just because someone isn’t willing or able to love us, it doesn’t mean that we are unlovable.
I kept asking myself: What do these people with strong relationships, parents with deep connections to their children, teachers nurturing creativity and learning, clergy walking with people through fa...
Even in the context of suffering—poverty, violence, human rights violations—not belonging in our families is still one of the most dangerous hurts. That’s because it has the power to break our heart,...
Because we are compelled to make stories, we are often compelled to take incomplete stories and run with them.
One thing that I tell people all the time is, 'I'm not going to answer a call from you after nine o'clock at night or before nine o'clock in the morning unless it's an emergency.'
You will always belong anywhere you show up as yourself and talk about yourself and your work in a real way.
Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.
When we lose our tolerance for vulnerability, joy becomes foreboding.
What behaviors are rewarded? Punished? Where and how are people actually spending their resources (time, money, attention)? What rules and expectations are followed, enforced, and ignored? Do people f...
What I've learned through my work and what I heard that night in Newtown makes one thing clear: Not enough of us know how to sit in pain with others. Worse, our discomfort shows up in ways that can hu...
There is no intimacy without vulnerability. Yet another powerful example of vulnerability as courage.
Rising strong after a fall is how we cultivate wholeheartedness in our lives; it’s the process that teaches us the most about who we are.
Ordinary courage is about putting our vulnerability on the line. In today’s world, that’s pretty extraordinary.
One of the most profound responses to this exercise came out of a focus group I did with a group of leaders at West Point. One officer pushed me a little on the accuracy of the intel and kept asking,...
Now I understand that in order to feel a true sense of belonging, I need to bring the real me to the table and that I can only do that if I’m practicing self-love. For years I thought it was the other...
Living BIG (boundaries, integrity, and generosity).
For me, vulnerability led to anxiety, which led to shame, which led to disconnection, which led to Bud Light.
Comparison is the thief of happiness.
But what we know now is that when we deny our emotion, it owns us. When we own our emotion, we can rebuild and find our way through the pain.