Sunday, March 17, 2013

Feeling Vulnerable

I haven't blog since my 31 day blog challenge ended. I just didn't have the inspiration. Today, Sunday, St. Patrick's Day, I slipped into a funk. I go there at least once a week. Today's darkness was no different than other days. I wake up after having anxiety dreams and thoughts and just say to myself, "Just get out of bed and go upstairs." So I get my tea and look out the window with my mind running a muck. It's Sunday, don't you think I can give the anxious ego a rest? No, not me. Joe comes up looking groggy and down as well. He tells me he was up at 6am with anxiety and did some tapping (EFT) and it made him feel better.



Seeing him so fragile made me dive head first into vulnerablilty. I shared how I just felt no confidence, I felt my photography was lacking, my focus (figuratively and metaphorically) was challenging. Is it because I am getting old. Am I just not in enough good health or good physical shape? I feel a lack...of confidence of engery of inspiration and motivation. My business has been off and I'm scared. I haven't been focused on marketing. There's that word again "focus." Funny how it keeps turning up. As I share with Joe I go deeper and deeper in that dark paralizing place where it's hard to climb out of. I feel my big oversized chair, I call the Queens chair, sucking me in and down. And speaking of the "F" word, in my depressed insanity, I think about a new project around Fear. F.E.A.R.=Fuck Everything And Run! I share with Joe, let's just sell everything and dive head first into fear and all the shit we feel and just run! I laugh through my tears. That's a place I go in my head now and again.


I hang on until 11am when Super Soul Sunday comes on and I know that I will be inspired. There it was Dr. Brene' Brown talking about vulnerability. She shares her study on vulnerability and that we are in a social climate of "scarcity." We wake up every day putting on our suite of armor to brave another day. We measure our success by how many "likes" we get on Facebook and how we are looking. I have a fear of softening into joy because I antisipate the other shoe dropping at any time and then there is deep disappointment.

Brene' Brown shared her inspiration for her new book, Daring Greatly:
“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 arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”  US President Teddy Roosevelt

I've been in the arena and I have jumped out. I felt knocked down, tired and that all I did was not enough. I made the mistakes of focusing (there's that word again) on the few critical comments from friends, family and strangers. Wow, if I had armor on it was very thin!

So I have decided to jump into my vulverablity and bring my camera on our journey today to see my Mom...being the dutiful daughter that I am. I will let me camera lead me. Joe said he would do the same, bring a camera and do a city safari.

So my friends, there you have it. I am fucking vulnerable, pissed that I feel this way. I'm putting my hip boots on and wading through the much and embracing my vulnerability and jumping back into the arena. If Brene' can do it, so can I! Fuck depression! Fuck judgement! Fuck my ego being the doubting darkness! I am willing to go the distance to being in gratitude and ultimately softening into joy!

Yours in feeling everything and skipping,

Mary Ann

PS. I'm not even going to proof read this cause I just don't fucking want to!

1 comment:

  1. It takes courage to write about vulnerability. As artists, we don't fear it
    the way so many others do. We try to take the leap into it and beyond.
    It's part of life. I like joy and laughter better, though!

    ReplyDelete