Bottle Up The Ocean

Recently my family and I vacationed at the beach. I love the beach!! Granted, I’m underneath an umbrella, but regardless, I love the sound of the ocean roar, children squealing and laughing, and sea birds gawking. It’s a breath of fresh air from the echoes of honking horns and tires monotonously speeding along the interstate concrete. While everyone else slept in, I would get up and join the fellow runners and walkers on the beach. Running on the beach takes me to another place. A place of peace and serenity. A place of reassurance and total focus. A place where it is just me, myself, and I. The ocean is a dwelling where status and gender, relationship status, kids or no, and level of education do not matter. The radiant sun shines on everyone the same. To enjoy this natural bliss, the only thing that matters is that we show up. Isn’t that like life? Being present? Being open and available? Brené Brown, in Daring Greatly, writes that “What we know matters, but who we are matters more. Being rather than knowing requires showing up and letting ourselves be seen…vulnerability.”While I can’t start every morning at the beach, I can bottle a little of it with me. I can start each day by showing up and being vulnerable with myself and with those whom I love. Where is your sweet space to just be you? Where can you go and be loved, affirmed, and supported not for what you know or what you do, but for who you are? Here are 3 challenges in making this happen:

• Find that space and place, and when you do, bottle it up and drink it every single day.
• Ask yourself if you can be vulnerable with the people in your life. Do you trust them and yourself to be vulnerable? If the answer is, “Yes”, then ask them to be your person.
• Find a therapist whom you can confide in and practice vulnerability along with learning ways in being more open and honest with yourself and with others.