On vulnerability

The word vulnerability keeps coming up for me lately. I feel vulnerable a lot these days. I feel vulnerable when I am driving, for example. Nashville has become a dangerous place to drive–road rage incidents are up, people moving here from all over bring their aggressive driving habits with them, everyone is in such a rush–it’s worse than ever.

I feel vulnerable when I am talking to my friends about my mental health struggles. I feel vulnerable sharing the truth about how I feel when someone asks me that usually benign question, “How are you?” For me, right now, it’s a loaded answer and I have trouble not telling the truth. I am struggling. I am healing. I am working on my mental health. I have a long road ahead of me.

But what does it really mean to be vulnerable? I’ve had to ask myself that question several times lately.

In yoga class the other day, my yoga teacher said, “Vulnerability is a sign of strength.” It brought tears to my eyes. I guess I’d always thought of it as a weakness. Then she said some other things that seemed to be pointed directly at me and my life right now and the tears streamed down the sides of my face while I was lying in the final twist before shavasana. I couldn’t stop crying, not during corpse pose and not as I walked out of the studio and not for a few minutes after class. I went in the bathroom to dry my eyes and look in the mirror. No one cared. People hugged me. Sometimes we cry in yoga.

In October, a week or so after getting out of the hospital*, I took a really great class through The Porch with Sheree Greer called “Rinse, Submit, Repeat” on submitting work to literary magazines. I was going over my notes from the class in order to remember how energized I felt then about committing to submitting my work more widely and more often this year. “Strength is the center of vulnerability,” she said. “To submit means letting go, relinquishing the outcome of the piece.” And, “Building a submitting practice is NOT a writing practice. They’re not the same. It’s a separate thing. Carve out time for it, maybe one day a week.” In other words, keep showing up for your work. Also, rejection is a part of the process. If you’re not getting rejections, you’re not submitting your work.

Of course, I always knew this. But I have let it keep me from putting myself and my work out there. I have been shy about what I do. Not because I don’t love and feel proud of my writing, but because to call oneself a writer means to be a part of the sometimes ugly, always competitive world of writers and publishing. We have a great and supportive community of writers here in Nashville and I am proud that I have worked hard over the last five or so years to be able to call myself a part of it. That kind of community is a gift for anyone who wants to embark on the solitary and often extremely frustrating world of writing and publishing.

Here I am at the end of January, the blahs firmly set in, my light box on the kitchen counter so I can turn it on every morning while drinking my coffee. When I sit at my desk I find I need to do some light organizing before I get started writing, if I am actually going to write that day. Sometimes I just think about what I want to write, take some notes in a journal, read some things. But the other day I looked back over those notes from the class and thought I might be ready now to tackle my submissions goal. Will I make a spreadsheet like Sheree does, for organizing my submissions–the ones I’ve submitted to plus all the aspirational magazines I’d love to see my work in? I doubt I’ll ever make one in Excel like she does (fellow Virgo here and even that seems like a bit much for me), but I’ll write it down in my writing notebook and I’ll use Submittable too and somehow those rejections will add up. Maybe I’ll even get an acceptance this year. Either way, I’ll show up for my work. Like I am showing up for myself through my therapy, yoga, walks and trying to eat as healthy as I can right now. Sleep is precious too. All the things that I know help me on this wild and challenging ride to recovery.

Another brilliant Sheree Greer question: What will be your rejection self-care routine? She asked us to share them with the class if we felt like it. I shared that I will probably gather up all my rejection emails, print them out and burn them in a pyre at the end of the year like I did all of my old academic papers when I left teaching. That was cathartic. It felt so good. I love fire. But, more simply, I’ll play with my dog and my cat, take a walk in nature, make a good cup of strong black tea and eat a few biscuits. Then I’ll get back to my desk and keep working on that essay. Every day, every week, every month is a chance to start over and do my best. That’s all I can do.

*An essay on this experience is in the works but it will be a while before I am ready to share it. In late April I will attend a writing residency where I intend to work on it with four days of uninterrupted time, sharing work with the other participants in the group and hopefully I will be able to do work on it there. I am very much looking forward to this opportunity and hope I’ll be feeling good by then and ready to tackle it head on.