The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings of Authenticity, Connection, and Courage
Written and Narrated By: Brené Brown
Length: 6 hrs and 30 mins
If you wanna hear about Brown’s vulnerability, this is for you! Fortunately, I DOOOO!
I totally get the negative reviews, really I do. The Power of Vulnerability is recordings of a workshop she did, complete with audience (Kinda sorta) participation, and DEFinitely fraught with Ms. Brown’s own experiences as a vulnerable human being. She has example after example after example of how inCREDibly flawed she is and how her research has led and changed her own life.
Which makes this all sound oh sooooo self-centered and what could eeeeeeasily be seen as a well-off white woman’s problems. Plus, she kind of zooms through how her data is collected which would lead me to question some of its validity. Questioned, that is, if I cared.
Which I don’t because the talks she’s giving are just so freaking awesome.
It’s like this, see. I get the way her brain works. Coming home from date night, all tra la la la la and suddenly wondering if an ax-murderer is lurking behind the bushes by the front door? Oh I am SO there! Watching a sweet video of a happy family driving along, singing Christmas carols and anticipating that a Mack truck is about to take them out? SO there! Cautioning someone not to judge themselves by how others miiiiight be seeing them then going on and worrying about it one’s self?
SO there!
We’re wired to look for danger. And we’re taught to be strong and not cry over the boo-boos. We’re told our drawings of horses are crap. Men are told to be strong and suck it up. Women are told to carry the load and be quiet, not take up space.
So when it comes to Ms. Brown bringing her data and her terminology to the wounded masses, I was enchanted. When you look at it through Brown’s studies on the Wholehearted, on living with fear but embracing Life with its pain and uncertainty anyway, you can’t feel anything but hope for your own sorry condition. Yes, she does rely heavily on her own experiences, but that’s what makes a workshop (As opposed to her books) so wonderful. She’s open with her audiences, and we hear her self-deprecating humor, her Texas twang, her own struggles as they’re conveyed to people who are receptive and who freakin’ laugh, for gosh sake. This, tho’ speaking of pain and suffering, is a joyful listen as we see that we’re all in this together.
Yup, if you’re a devotee, you’ve heard plenty of these stories throughout other works/books of hers. And if you’ve watched the TED talk that went viral and made her a much-sought out speaker, yes her complete and total nervous breakdown over what she thought was data which could NOT be right, that she was NOT living as a Wholehearted individual, that she COULD be fixed by this competent therapist but scheduled exACTly for six months and six months only? Yes, familiar, but hiLARious. It’s delivered as only a Texas twang freaking out in front of an audience, as only Ms. Brown, can.
My favorite part, the part that stuck with me (One who’s LIVED in one awesome therapist’s office for eight years then went on, after yet ANOTHER hiccup, to live Telehealth-ing with yet another awesome therapist for yeeeears) was when her therapist likened her to a turtle without a shell living in a briar patch. Tell me how to get a new shell, Brown shrieks.
Move out of the briar patch, the sage replies cheekily.
You been trying on shell after shell? Turns out the brave thing to do, the vulnerable (Cuz ya don’t know if it’ll work or not, gotta have some faith here) thing to do, is to take the first tentative steps… towards a patch that’s no longer ALL briars…
Just a few, we all get hurt. But we make do with these trauma-fearing brains we’ve got. We love our lives, we hold dear ones close.
And we express gratitude instead of flinching…
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.