Not Finished Yet

One silly idea keeps on coming up these days and it is time for me to put this puppy out there for you all to see just how silly. When spoken it sounds something like this: 

There is nothing more to say on that old blog of mine. 

All that is left to do is get on with being a woman now. 

You might say, Halle there is nothing wrong with that sort of thinking! You have reached the promised land! Hallelujah! Go in peace girl. 

The truth is more like this: 

Real life is only just beginning. 

I need exactly what everyone needs to get on with life. 

Courage.

Being a real human being isn't something you are ever finished with. That is called being dead. 

Lately, I have been dealing with a lot of practical matters and there is nothing wrong with that, but all those campaign strategy meetings in your head can lead to a loss of the very thing that brought me here; vulnerability. A good friend who I correspond with had the audacity to suggest that all those great strategies were very mannish! She reminded me that I was the person who introduced her to Brené Brown through a TED talk "The power of vulnerability" 

My friend reminded me that what made it possible for me to be who I am now is love and belonging. It would be crazy to say that every room I enter is filled with people who I love and they love me, but in a way, that is exactly what I feel. 

Transsexuals don't have a lock on all the shame and guilt in the world. There are all sorts of reasons to bash yourself minute to minute because you don't feel you are right, or belong. Realizing that changed me. This vulnerability thing isn't just me. It is all of us right down to the most "normal" of those you will meet. 
When you walk into that room and feel compassion for those around you and have empathy for those feelings they have, that is love.

Brené's talk is down there below the fold, along with a few quotes from the transcript. You can put in subtitles if you like and you can pull up a whole transcript as I did in your own language by viewing it using the link included above. 

She is still saying something life-changing in this talk. I will watch this over and over to remind myself to never get complaisant about being whole-hearted. 

Love yourself! Love others. 




....There was only one variable that separated the people who have a strong sense of love and belonging and the people who really struggle for it. And that was, the people who have a strong sense of love and belonging believe they're worthy of love and belonging. That's it. They believe they're worthy…

What do these people have in common?…

What they had in common was a sense of courage. And I want to separate courage and bravery for you for a minute. Courage, the original definition of courage,when it first came into the English language -- it's from the Latin word "cor," meaning "heart" --and the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart. And so these folks had, very simply, the courage to be imperfect. They had the compassion to be kind to themselves first and then to others, because, as it turns out, we can't practice compassion with other people if we can't treat ourselves kindly. And the last was they had connection, and -- this was the hard part -- as a result of authenticity, they were willing to let go of who they thought they should be in order to be who they were, which you have to absolutely do that for connection...

The other thing that they had in common was this: They fully embraced vulnerability. They believed that what made them vulnerable made them beautiful. They didn't talk about vulnerability being comfortable, nor did they really talk about it being excruciating -- as I had heard it earlier in the shame interviewing. They just talked about it being necessary. They talked about the willingness to say, "I love you" first ... the willingness to do something where there are no guarantees ...