Sometimes, You Have to Get Down (Follow-up)

If my Sometimes, You Have to Get Down post resonated with you and if you have 20 minutes, this is really worth watching.   Brene Brown is a researcher who has studied vulnerability and also struggled with the implications she found in her research.   She is a great story-teller.  One of the gems I take away from this talk is that we cannot selectively numb emotion.   When I eat or nap or watch a rom-com in order to numb the pain in my life, I also numb joy, gratitude, love and other positive emotions.  That describes the last few years of my life with crazy precision.   Makes me sad.

Another gem:  Wholehearted people are willing to let go of who they thought they should be in order to be themselves.   I probably need to get off this computer and just go journal for a couple of hours about this one.  I remember being in grad school about a decade ago and having a very strong picture of who I was going to be in the world.  In short, it involved being a "strong woman" (whatever hell that meant to an inexperienced 26 year old), with a world-saving career (never really thought about how children would fit into that picture), with amazing depth and spirituality, in an awesome marriage (again, what the h*** does a 26 year old single woman know about that?) and with a gorgeous body (!!!).   A decade later, I am realizing just how short I fall from being that super-woman.  I was on the superwoman trajectory for a while, but my picture was falling apart at the edges.  Then came two boys, who spilled stuff on that fraying picture right from the start.  It was unrecognizable at about day two of being a parent.  I was never going to be that picture.  What I am is imperfect me.  If I could only convince myself that that is enough.