Welcome to my blog, Sensitive Strength.

“Sensitivity is a sign of life. Better hurt than hardened. I bow to those who keep their hearts open when it is most difficult, those who refuse to keep their armor on any longer than they have to, those who recognize the courage at the heart of vulnerability. After all the malevolent warriors end each other, the open-hearted will inherit the earth”. “Ascending with Both Feet On the Ground”, by Jeff Brown.

This blog is about the courage to open your heart. Having the strength to be vulnerable. Why is it a strength? Because if we can be open with ourselves and others then we can let go of the defenses that keep us part. If we can be comfortable with our own truth, then we can connect with others with empathy, compassion and joy.

What makes people happy in life is authentic connection. Connection to ourselves, to others, to our passions, and to a spiritual felt sense of something beyond what our minds can conceive.

In this blog, we are exploring the therapeutic possibilities resulting from experimenting with art therapy and social media. I am interviewing people about vulnerability, photographing them, creating art work in response, and posting the results on this public blog. The purpose of this idea is to broaden the context in which discoveries are made, so that people are introduced to the possibility of transformation by virtue of having their ideas, dreams, resistances, feelings responded to and discussed.

In this experiment, we will see how people respond to the question, “Do you think being sensitive is a strength or a weakness?”.

This blog is about having a real human to human connection. To walk the streets and to have an authentic personal experience with a stranger who as a result becomes a stranger no more.

I have spent 40 years listening to people. This has been my greatest experience and my deepest learning. To sit face to face with another, to touch soul to soul with the joy and the pain. To connect deeply with another and become more than our individual selves.

My clients and I learn together to practice presence. I put some of my feelings on the shelf, the ones that I feel might distract me from being fully focused, and stay open to the ones the ones that I feel can help me to understand and deeply connect . It has been a lifetime learning to understand which is which.

My job is to see and feel what my clients are afraid to see and feel. To hold a space for them to be present with themselves. To help them understand and accept the most vulnerable parts of themselves. To the extent that we can be vulnerable is the extent that we can be empowered in our lives.

In terms of my own vulnerability, I am embarking upon this project with fear. I am confronting the unknown. How will these people respond to my request to take their photograph and ask them personal questions? Will they judge me as crazy? Will they be crazy and try to hurt me with their words or otherwise? How will the public respond? How will my colleagues respond? I am confronting the ghosts within, the introjects that arise when I entertain and share a new idea. I’ve learned from all of my years on both sides of the couch that the only way out is in. I can be afraid; I can be vulnerable, yet having the courage to be so is what loosens the ties to the ghosts of the past. I have found that giving myself this freedom to be myself in this way is healing, energizing and rewarding.

I hope you enjoy my weekly posts. Please feel free to leave your comments.