Vulnerability and why we need it every day

As a creative person, I’ve worn many hats over the years - recording artist, musician, producer, collaborator, songwriter, composer, student, teacher. One of the common traits that runs through all of these facets of my relationship to music is vulnerability. It’s vulnerable to be a student, admitting that you don’t know something and being willing to not be where you want to be in terms of skill and finesse for quite a while. It’s vulnerable to be a collaborator because you are stepping out of your comfort zone by bringing your ideas and energy to something that is shared while tenderly holding space for someone else’s vulnerability to bring out their best and trusting that your partner will do the same. As a composer, it’s extremely vulnerable because you are following your intuition when you write, record and release music out into the world knowing full well that it will be judged by others. Whether someone else likes it or not is beyond our control, but the act of creating is the gift and the feeling that’s left after you’ve sort of given birth to a new piece of music can inform your ability and willingness to do it all over again.

As an artist, I always want to feel growth and I’d like to feel like the journey is taking me to new places. To my surprise, along with being collaborator and composer, I found myself as a student again in a new yet somehow familiar field - animal communication. Those not so coincidental coincidences that guided me towards this new facet of myself started showing up for me about six years ago. They were probably there for longer, but sometimes you only see things in hindsight and I had blinders on with my identity in music that blocked out everything else. Maybe those little nudges along the way are what made this “new” field feel familiar. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always had this inner knowing, a guiding force. Intuition, guide, spirit, soul expression - whatever you want to call it - and for a long time I hid it or downplayed it. It felt like it would be too vulnerable to let that inner voice or power be truly heard. I gave away that power so the vulnerability I needed to show up to even attempt anything that I’ve pursued could feel like an open wound at times. That made me want to show up less, be seen less, but the whole time an inner strength was patiently waiting to be seen and heard.

I started making meditation a daily pause to begin to listen to that inner knowing (not coincidentally, that was about six years ago). Meditation can feel vulnerable with all of these thoughts running around our monkey mind. But when you make space like that, energy beyond the blinders of the self (or the way we identify only with what feels safe or familiar to the self), expansive things happen. Eckhart Tolle has been a big influence and he talks about our inner purpose being our essence and that whatever you “do” as a human being, as a career, as a hobby or as a moment to moment existence is our outer purpose and that is secondary. When this outward expression allows our inner purpose or essence to shine through, you will be in alignment. I was out of alignment by directing all my inner essence through only one exit door to be seen in the world and I could feel that until I started opening up to new energy beyond identifying with my career in music.

It’s been a vulnerability fest* to get to the point of saying out loud to other people that I love communicating with animals and giving them a voice. Everything that held me back was resisting that vulnerability - the same vulnerability that it takes to release a new piece of music out into the world and to have everyone who hears it come away with an opinion that is beyond my control. Vulnerability is the antithesis of control and when we take our hands off the wheel, all sorts of new adventures reveal themselves. Adventures that we would have missed if we didn’t experience that surrender to open ourselves to being vulnerable.

Here’s to being 100% us.

*(BTW a vulnerability fest isn’t fun as you break down barriers that you’ve put up over many years and reassess why you put the barriers up in the first place. In hindsight - totally worth it! 😁)