Five Vulnerable Things: Vol. 09
on support, usefulness, analog living, invisible impact, and letting go of getting it right
1. “There are worlds upon worlds wanting to support you.”
Being sick and down for the count has a way of shrinking your inner world. The body is weak, the mind gets louder, and the inner voice can turn cruel and convincing. In the middle of that fog, I heard Joe Hudson say, “There are worlds upon worlds wanting to support you,” and it felt like a fish hook pulling me back to shore. Not as a concept, but as a truth. Even when I feel isolated in my body or trapped in my head, support is still moving toward me in ways I cannot always see. Sometimes support looks like rest. Sometimes it looks like a sentence landing at the exact right moment. Sometimes it looks like being carried when you cannot carry yourself. The support does not disappear just because you are temporarily offline.
2. Who am I when I am not being useful?
This question has been quietly undoing me in the best way. For so long, my sense of worth has been entangled with being helpful, available, and generative for other people’s visions. When I cannot give, fix, or produce, I am forced to sit with the raw question of who I am without usefulness as a currency. What I am finding is surprising and liberating. I am still here. I am still worthy of care. I am still allowed to take up space. This question is not meant to shame us. It is meant to free us from the belief that love must be earned through output.
3. Analog as a return to discernment.
Lately I am noticing how much clearer I feel when I slow my life down on purpose. Writing by hand instead of typing. Sitting without something playing in the background. Letting myself be bored long enough for a real thought to surface. Analog practices create friction in a world that is designed to move too fast, and that friction helps me feel what is actually true. When I am constantly plugged in, I outsource my intuition. When I am offline, my body gets a vote again. Choosing analog right now feels less like a lifestyle choice and more like a form of self trust.
4. Your impact cannot be measured.
This New York trip was messy and exhausting, but in the middle of it something really magical landed quite clearly for me. I sat down for the first real one on one with a friend from meditation teacher training, and she began quoting my newsletters and reflections back to me. Things I had written months ago and barely remembered posting. In that moment I understood that impact is not visible in likes, comments, or metrics. It moves invisibly. It ripples. The work you put into the world keeps working long after you stop watching it. You do not always get to see what your honesty unlocks in someone else, but that does not mean it is not happening.
5. What if the whole point of life was to stop trying to get it right
This past week made something undeniable clear. I am exhausted from trying to get life right. The overthinking, the self betrayal, the second guessing all come from the same belief. That there is a correct way to be human and that I am constantly falling short of it. In acting, the moment someone makes a mistake is often when the scene comes alive. The wrong choice creates texture, depth, and surprise. Right is usually boring. Wrong is where the truth slips through. What if I cannot mess this up. What if there is only what is alive in me right now asking to be expressed. The real work then is not perfection, but trust. Trusting myself enough to follow the breadcrumbs that are mine, without getting distracted by the crumbs of other people’s dreams scattered around me.
Loved this post as I always do when you post 🥰 Feeling so many of these themes echo through my experience as well at this time 🙏 We are definitely on a similar wavelength. I appreciate so much this reflection, thank you for sharing 💜