“You only have two options—you do vulnerability knowingly, or vulnerability does you. People are taking their pain, and they’re working it out on other people. And when you don’t acknowledge your vulnerability, you work your shit out on other people.”
{Brene Brown}
At our best, we are dandelions, our seeds spreading out from us wherever we go. Every interaction is a puff of wind, taking more of the best we have to offer towards and onto the people in our lives. Great relationships are the accumulation of those seeds and the positive ways that they take root in one another’s lives.
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
At our worst, we are manure spreaders, every interaction a chance to cover others in the worst smelling, least desirable parts of ourselves. Toxic relationships are made up of the accumulation of the manure we spread around and the negative ways it impacts other’s lives.
It’s a wonderful irony that manure is widely used to make things grow. To do so, it must be transformed; it must be put in the ground and combined with other elements before it can become a medium for growth.
So it goes with us. We can transform our own pain – the pain that becomes our manure – by acknowledging it, by admitting to how we use and misuse it and by offering reconciliation to ourselves and to others. When that happens, our worst inclinations become source material for the realization of our better selves.
