I just wrapped up doing my “30 days of vulnerability challenge”.
The intention was to share a moment of vulnerability every day for thirty days.
It was my version of a “yoga challenge”, “juicing challenge” or “no sugar challenge”.
I was joined by people who talked about their own self sabotage, fear, challenges they faced starting their own businesses, insecurity while dancing, taking chances, uncertainty, depression, insomnia, breaking, missing past lovers, being a single mother, sexual assault, being tired, sleeping till noon and eating apple pie for breakfast.
An outpour of human experiences is documented all over social media behind #30daysofvulnerability.
Sometimes, all it takes is going first.
I’ve met people who have shame around telling me they’ve met their partners on Tinder or their husbands on Plenty Of Fish.
Once, I had felt worried about saying, “I just had an abortion” and then discovered all three women working with me had the exact same experience.
We make up shame-filled stories attached to things in our lives and not saying it out loud only gives our shame more power.
Who else is currently grieving?
Who else is currently healing from a miscarriage?
Who else ate popcorn for dinner and stayed up all night binge-watching Vampire Diaries?
“The antidote to shame is empathy and awareness.” – Brene Brown.
When we say things out loud it not only takes some of the weight away, but it also gives other people permission to do the same.
My life’s work is to empower people to live their truths and be authentic.
How I do that is transparency—I write nonfiction online for 40k+ people every day.
I don’t just write about the joy and the love in my life—I also talk about being dumped, insecurity, feeling unworthy, being broke, the non-rainbow emotions that came with finding my father and recently my process while grieving a close friend who committed suicide.
Social media is somewhere I go to share my poems about sex, desire, love, humor, achievements, art…and it’s also where I share my pain.
People are uncomfortable with pain.
Every time I post something about feminism, abortion or grief I usually lose trails of followers—and that’s okay.
I only want people on my bus who can handle all the truth—not just the feel good, inspiring, empowering bits.
In sharing my grief the last five months I have created a space for other people’s grief.
My inbox, emails, and comments are full of not only support, community, and connection but also people who are grieving.
“My boyfriend committed suicide last night, what do I do?”
When we let our pain live out loud we create a beautiful space for people to also exhale and know it’s okay to say it out loud.
I wrote a post about depression in my 30 days of vulnerability challenge where I said that I believe depression is a room that every single human on this earth can end up in.
It’s the room down the hall in our house and we sometimes hover outside of it and pray we won’t ever wind up inside.
I talked about the importance of self care—mental, heart and physically moving energy and pain from our bodies.
How without my physical self care, I would end up in that room too.
The next day an email landed in my inbox from someone anonymous who thanked me for sharing my post on depression. They expressed that they were also depressed and said a few things that rang suicidal bells in my brain.
I thanked them for their transparency and asked if they were suicidal.
They replied that they were, and that they had been planning on taking their life two days before.
I wrote them a big email, giving them my number for support and asking for them to stay—but I wanted to do more.
I wrote a Facebook post that night asking for the support of my online community of readers, it read:
I need your support.
Last night I received an anonymous email from someone who claimed she was depressed.This triggered my own grief and fear around my friend who passed. Lately, I don’t want to touch depression with a ten foot pole.
I replied last night and her email back today she said she is suicidal.
I’ve offered myself and my number as support and told her I want her to live, but I want to do more.
I want her to be hit hard by the love of strangers who are rooting for her to live.
She is anonymous, but I also know she is a reader of my work–and my hope is that every like and comment on this post will thrust life into her soul and hope into her heart.
We are here to feel seen, connected and loved.
We don’t talk about depression, we don’t talk about suicide–it breaks my fucking heart.
I want to talk about these things & I want to use social media for something meaningful.
So, tonight will you join me by sending written prayers and love to a soul who we want to keep on living?
I want her to choose to live. I want her to feel loved and connected and seen.
Thank you.
1,100 people liked the post, and 395 people commented with words of encouragement, love, and support.
People shared of their own moments of being suicidal, of their own depression.
People gave phone numbers and offered themselves as ears and support.
Someone even wrote a song for her.
1,500 people cheered and loved a human they didn’t know.
And this person wrote me and said she spent the next day writing every single comment of love and support down—to fall back on and read.
This is what we can use social media for—to start movements that allow us to be seen, felt, heard, connected and saved from feeling alone in the darkest of the night.