Do you ever have that jumbled up feeling of frustration – and nothing you are doing seems to be working in the way you’d like? When this happens for me I often discover I’m not being honest about what I’m feeling. I’m not acknowledging my vulnerability.

This impacts my energetic vibration, which in turn, like magic, affects everything I touch. Through the law of attraction, I start getting jumbled and unclear results in life. The book I’m editing in Word throws endless obstacles at me. An old back problem acts up.

Eventually, I’m reduced to tears. Which is the place where it all needs to clear, anyhow! I realize, Oh, that’s what I have been feeling…I had been holding all of it at bay.

Many who read my work recognize that I am openly vulnerable with you. This is not because I’m masochistic. It’s because vulnerability, a willingness to honestly feel what I feel- no matter how strange, confusing or terrifying the idea of feeling it- is the most direct and efficient taproot I can find to Truth. Feelings connect us to Truth. It is an amazing and often overlooked resource, this ability to feel things so deeply. Like seeing the sun after an overcast day, we suddenly see clearly when we could not, had we not honestly acknowledged our feelings. Truth clears things up, quickly. We quickly feel good again. At peace with our self.

Vulnerability requires our honest acknowledgement of what we feel. But embracing vulnerability also means figuring out how to truly soothe ourselves.  I was on a basketball court yesterday, roller skating, when I witnessed a young boy throwing a tantrum. He apparently thought his dad had done something really offensive while playing ball, and he simply refused to be consoled. He lay down in the middle of that hot court and wailed. When grandpa tried to cheer him up with a joke, then with (gasp!) the offensive ball, he wailed even louder and got up, ran to the other side of the court, laid face down again and cried and cried.

I deeply relished his tantrum- which says something about how I’d been feeling! I loved that he let it all out, full body, and just went with what he felt, totally in his subjective experience.  Meanwhile, dad was on the cell phone texting. Mom was walking around with baby. Grandpa had attempted to soothe him. He refused it. Release, when we need it in this way, is the soothing balm itself. Other times, we must figure out the right words or action, to reassure, calm, hold, our upset heart.

I recently read a few words from another healer, about vulnerability, that gave me pause. She suggested feeling our vulnerability is a service we give to others. I, too, think it makes us relatable, as I’ve discovered over and over writing to you. Vulnerability certainly connects us to our shared humanity in a way nothing else can. But more deeply, lately, at least for me, I find its truer value is that my vulnerability connects me to ME. When I feel my internal feelings opening up like a flower, I feel myself opening to ever greater degrees of Presence. Truth. To what’s real. Then, since my energy body comes back online and into a high vibration, again, almost magically the Word document cooperates and my back problem resolves!

I’d love to share the Vulnerability card, from my forthcoming Intuitive Energy Divination Deck, with you (for the first time ever, I am publisher, writer -AND- artist, so it’s been slow yet steady. I am making great progress- the cards are feeling complete, and the guidebook proof is being ordered today. Yay!). Our vulnerability is beautiful, as the beauty of this particular card continues to remind me. Since Libra Full Moon, this past Sunday, joined Venus and Sun with the asteroid, Chiron, which I associate with befriending our tenderest parts, our human vulnerability…May you hold yourself with great care, this week- and always.

Card 19: Vulnerability

Your feelings need your honesty and soothing.

Card Meaning: Life can bring us to our knees. We all experience pain, loss. Someone doesn’t treat us in the way we want to be treated. We survive unfairness, tragedies, and trauma. All of this happens because we are human, and through absolutely no fault of our own. Some days, we just feel exceptionally vulnerable and sensitive to any and all of it, often without knowing why this particular day is any different from the one that came before it.

Now is the moment to befriend your vulnerability. To befriend means “be a friend”—to you. You don’t have to be so strong all the time. You are human, friend. You are strong, and you are also delicate, fragile. You bleed when you get cut, you feel homesick for someone, or someplace else, just like the rest of us. This is a beautiful existence, and while there is so much to be grateful for, your eyes still need to water occasionally with the sheer madness, sadness, frustration, confusion, shock, or pain of it all.

Unfortunately the world doesn’t always have a friendly relationship to vulnerability, which makes it more difficult to soften into. Were you, like many, given the early message that feeling vulnerable, having strong feelings, makes you weak? Actually, the opposite is true. In disconnecting from the Truth of your feelings, you paradoxically have less ability to respond to difficult energies and challenges—to life itself. Feeling your feelings always makes you stronger. Right now, can you offer yourself permission to curl up in a ball for a while? To fall apart? To shut the door and shut out the world? To cry? To be honest about how you really feel – no matter how terrified you are of feeling them? To trust that your authentic feelings will always lead you back home to yourself? Because they will. Your feelings can’t hurt you. As difficult as they are to feel, on the other side of any uncomfortable feeling exists peace and calm. Your feelings always connect you back to yourself, and to Truth. Often, the quickest remedy for feeling vulnerable is actually saying aloud, verbally, to yourself or another, “I feel really vulnerable today…” and allowing healing release to flow. Vulnerability is built into the human experience, and while there is no preventative against feeling vulnerable, allow your tears to flow, your heart to bleed, and you’ll feel strong again. Deny yourself this and you lose connection to Truth, and a host of precious resources inherent to your nature. You have permission to feel all that is real. To feel. And to hold yourself well, as you do. To be lovingly tended to by your nurturing Divine Self!

Symbol: Crab, Moon, and coral peony flower. Crab holds up its pincher in a defensive posture, knowing that all that separates its tender insides from the harsh world is its delicate, thin shell, while Cosmic Mother Moon looks on, assuring this too will pass. The capacity to feel everything you do—feel this vulnerable, have skin this thin—can seem a double-edged sword, yet feeling all that you do connects you with everything that is real in life. And as the saying goes…the Truth will set you free. Honoring and befriending your feelings also protects you from picking up on external energies that have nothing to do with you. Feelings guide you toward who and what is for you, and away from who or what is not. So, love your vulnerable feelings! Regard your sensitivity and vulnerability as the rare and special thing it is, like the exotic coral peony flower.