This is Contagious Vulnerability!
A Mindfulness Practice for Mental Wellness
“The things that matter most in our lives are not fantastic or grand. They are moments when we touch one another.”
Jack Kornfield
Ten and a half months ago, at the dawning of a new year and new decade, I left the known multiverse of my being and courageously dove into the vast sea of the unknown with the intention of bringing Contagious Vulnerability — the startup of me — to life in the world. Not really having a clue as to what that really meant.
When I started this journey, Contagious Vulnerability was more potential than actual. More unknown than known. More like a mantra than a felt or lived experience. A glimmer of something in my soul that was wanting to come forward.
A drumbeat tapping deep within my consciousness.
A calling.
My soul’s purpose?
The Quickening
Contagious Vulnerability first surfaced in the fall of 2016 during a values and purpose workshop and was so alive and enlivening for me that I excitedly announced to the world via my first ever Medium post:
“I am…Contagious Vulnerability! My intention…is to start a conversation with the world and share stories and wisdom from my life experiences to inspire others to keep going when all seems dark and hopeless — to give people the courage to continue the journey through their inner darkness to find the light, joy and wisdom within.”
I wrote two more Medium articles (which you can find here and here if you're curious), trademarked it on the belief that it was going to be a thing big enough to warrant protection, then poured my energy into designing a series of transformational group experiences hosted at the Compound of Joy to heal diseases of disconnection — disconnection from self, from one another, and from nature.
The Going Gets Tough
After a year of dedication and love’s laboring, the series I envisioned ended up being a single workshop with a handful of participants. One experience which taught me a lot. I learned that partnership is hard and that some of my partners weren’t really, or at least weren’t the right, partners. I learned that I could successfully design and host powerful, transformational workshops but that filling them with enough people to make financial sense was hard without having first built a following. I shed one partner then the other fell away, pulled off into her own journey. A journey that didn’t include me.
Alone and uncertain as to how to make this thing a thing, fear took hold and pushed the dream that is Contagious Vulnerability back down into the depths from which it came to germinate a bit further. I spent 2019 looking outside myself for the answers to my life’s work questions, seeking values-aligned professional opportunities in other people’s containers. As the year drew to a close, I experienced a transformational experience courtesy of one of those aligned containers which gave me an opportunity to re-examine those well-hidden fears, bringing them out into the light and affording me a powerful new perspective and new resolve to conquer them once and for all.
Contagious Vulnerability 2.0
Which brings me back to where this piece started. To the dawning of 2020 and my intention to launch the start-up of me and unleash Contagious Vulnerability into the world.
I recognized that I needed to help bring this mysterious thing I call Contagious Vulnerability to life for myself and for others. I needed to establish thought leadership and create an education layer in the marketplace to support and inform future offerings. I started the Contagious Vulnerability Project on Medium, a weekly column giving voice to my journey of personal transformation live as it’s unfolding. Resuming my courageous and contagiously vulnerable conversation with the world about personal transformation that I had started back in 2018. I am proud to say that I have kept up this weekly writing practice in the face of — and as a powerful response to — the madness that is 2020 and built enormous momentum. There’s now a there there where once there was only emptiness, longing, and a pesky, persistent soul tapping.
Look What I Made!
34 — now 35! — articles later I have a lot to be proud of! I have:
brought Contagious Vulnerability to life — in me and in the world;
become a writer and feel I can now fully own and embody the “voice of transformation” and “Mother of Contagious Vulnerability” titles I’ve had on my LinkedIn profile for the past year;
attracted over 1,100 Medium followers and secured syndication in two Medium publications;
launched a new website that is fully and authentically me;
transformed Contagious Vulnerability into a true conversational experience — realizing my original vision of it being a dialogue not a monologue;
launched a popular Contagious Vulnerability Club on Clubhouse, the new “it” audio-only social platform, and now host a weekly 90-minute interactive experience with two amazing co-facilitators where people are invited to come and share what’s on their hearts;
been invited by amazing beings who inspire me to offer Contagious Vulnerability as an element of the transformational experiences they host;
started to co-create experiences to bring the gifts of this practice to organizations and individuals seeking to lead, work, and communicate with greater humanity and authenticity.
A Mindfulness Practice for Mental Wellness
I have come to learn through all of this that Contagious Vulnerability is about authentic human connection.
About giving voice to what’s on our hearts.
About the power of witnessing and being witnessed to deepen our relationships with ourselves and each other.
About bringing our inner longings and the voices calling from deep within our souls out into the light of the collective consciousness where they can be seen, heard, and honored as the divine gifts of wisdom that they are.
Contagious Vulnerability is not therapy and it is deeply therapeutic. It’s expressive but it’s not performative emoting. It’s about the ME and the WE — embracing the exquisite simultaneity of their paradoxical separateness and oneness.
Contagious Vulnerability is a mindfulness practice for Mental Wellness.
I have unleashed and am surfing atop a tidal wave of Contagious Vulnerability. And for the past nearly 3 weeks, I’ve been quiet. Struggling to give voice to what’s alive for me. Struggling because I’m feeling so much aliveness in my being.
I needed a minute to acclimatize to this new level of intensity. To get my bearings and ground myself so that I am able to hold all that I’ve unleashed with ease, grace, and intention. That has meant swapping out coffee — which had started to make me feel like a hummingbird on molly — for the gentler buzz of heart-opening, ceremonial cacao; starting my day with meditation and adding yoga nidra when my frequency starts getting too high; taking barefoot walks in the surf on Doran Beach (see photo above); and doing a lot of pranayama breathwork. It must be working because I was finally able to bring this piece to life, writing it from a calm and grounded place.
It’s been both humbling and awe-inspiring to see my vision for this movement come to life.
To watch chain reactions of vulnerable, thoughtful, and intentional sharing amongst perfect strangers and the authentic, human heart connections that spring up as a result.
To see human beings light up with joyful aliveness as they are witnessed and held in community as they courageously share what’s on their hearts.
To feel the ripple effect in the universe as these newly activated beings take these experiences back out into their worlds, becoming ambassadors of vulnerability in their future interactions, making its power contagious.
My heart is full. The Joy is jumping! :)
And, I know in my heart that as awesome as the present moment is, the best is yet to come!
If you’re navigating vulnerability and could use a guide, book a curious conversation to explore how I can be of service to you on your journey!