the vulnerability of being loved

I started writing as a kid because talking to my journal felt safer than confiding in anyone else at home. There were language, generational, and cultural barriers with close to no shared interests. My mother’s life was dedicated to Jesus and my life was dedicated to friendship and exploration. I’d get into trouble for talking on the phone too late. I’d get scolded for being too loud and expressive. I’d get forced to pray and read the Bible multiple times a day. I quickly realized my journal was the safest place to share my thoughts and feelings. And I had a lot to share.

For most of my upbringing, I felt alone because I felt unknown by the people I had to call family.

I’ve since learned: you can be surrounded by people all day and still feel lonely if you don’t feel truly known for who you are. So, to be loved is to feel known. And to feel known is to know that you’re not alone. Love is learning who someone is and embracing who they are becoming, in all their messy, minute details.

While living in densely populated New York City, I felt dreadfully lonely for three years before I found people who loved in similar ways as I did. I found QTPOC artists, creative collectives, and friends of friends who taught me what healthy, reciprocal love felt like. We bonded over shared values, practiced care together, and engaged in acts of support and mutual aid for our NYC QTPOC communities.

By the end of my eight years in the city, I regularly found myself in spaces where I felt enveloped in love. I roamed around homes, venues, and creative spaces feeling contained, safe, secure in a way that vastly differed from the dominance-driven, hierarchical environments I’ve had to navigate most of my life. I felt known for who I was, quirks and all.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how vulnerable it is to be loved by someone. To share new thoughts and unspoken desires. To be open to the discomfort of conflict and build the essential muscle of repair. To take the risk of having your heart broken (platonically or romantically) and practicing the courage it takes to heal, again and again.

Being loved is as risky as loving someone. It means baring yourself in a way that changes you forever (a la Octavia Butler’s “all that you touch you change / all that you change changes you”).

In his memoir A History of My Brief Body, Billy-Ray Belcourt writes: “To love someone is firstly to confess: I’m prepared to be devastated by you.”

Maybe that’s where the vulnerability comes from: preparing your heart for the inevitable disappointments that come with sustained intimacy while remaining open to the beautiful delights that come with knowing and being known by another person in a world of 8 billion floating bodies.

If you have a blossoming connection in your life, remember that vulnerability can create new discomforts but this exact practice is what leads to deeper connection. Especially if you were raised to believe that you can only be loved by being of obedient service (eldest child of immigrants, anyone?!), it can feel terrifying to sit back and relax into receiving mode. Think of it as a practice of empathy—you too deserve to know what it feels like to receive the kind of love and care you generously give.

On a separate note, I’ve been thinking a lot about the collective times and individual changes we’re all navigating. I’m hearing of people pivoting in and out of careers, reimagining what they want to do with their lives, reevaluating friendships, balancing self x communal care, and searching for a deeper sense of purpose. I’ve been teaching a workshop called Design Your Life! (fka Design Your Future) for the past 10 years, addressing many of these topics. Every so often, I update it with new frameworks, exercises, and insights that I’ve experimented with in my own journey of constantly designing and redesigning my life around my creative pursuits and auDHD needs.

A sense of agency and autonomy is one of the most important assets we have in an age of censorship and uncertainty. Design Your Life! is a 3-hour workshop where you can look at your life from a bird’s-eye view, enhance what’s working, rewrite what isn’t working, and map out a container that can hold the version of you that you’re becoming. It’s a chance to practice being vulnerable with yourself and a chance to be inspired by others doing the same.

I’ll be teaching the virtual workshop via Zoom on two different dates: once on Thursday, September 3 from 3pm-6pm PST/6pm-9pm EST and again on Friday, September 11 from 12pm-3pm PST/3pm-6pm EST. Registration is now open! Share with anyone who might be interested 🕺🏻🦋✨