Quotes About Vulnerability

I feel like my honesty gives people the freedom to talk about things they wouldn't otherwise.

The challenge is not to be perfect…it's to be whole

Perhaps you think that by intimacy I mean sex, so allow me to clarify. Sex can be intimate but isn't necessarily so; sometimes it's just the pleasurable stimulation of genitalia. By intimacy I mean an attunement between two people who, despite each other's evident flaws, open their hearts fully to each other. This openness makes them vulnerable, so trust is key. So is self-love: It's impossible to be truly intimate with someone if you don't like yourself.

If you allow yourself, you can become stronger in the very places that you've been broken

I had it in my head. I thought I had it in my heart—in my body—but I didn't; not really. I couldn't. It was too scary, like stepping off a cliff without knowing if there was a trampoline below. It meant doing life differently.

When I'm single, I'm this fabulous, independent, confident woman, and then I get involved with one disastrous man after another and I turn into this needy, insecure, fearful girl who becomes frightened of her own shadow.

It's all well and good saying you avoid pain by avoiding relationships, but what about the wonderful things you're avoiding as well? What about the joy and the intimacy and the trust that come with finding someone you love?

I knew that we were two humans, that's all, two humans walking around blindly in the night, looking for a warm hand.

tear-filled eyes. I could handle her tears of pain, and her tears of anger. But these… these tears are from something that breaks me a little.

A starving man learns to respect the hand that feeds him, the one who cares for his most primal needs. So when I begin training a woman, my plan is intentional. I strip her of the most basic necessities. Food, clothing, shelter. Though her needs are contrived by me, the cumulative effects of my training will not be in vain.

Such a vulnerable position, baring the neck, as if waiting for the executioner's axe. The vampire's bite. The intimate kiss of a lover. And now, for me… a collar and chain.

How fragile we are, between the few good moments.

Think assailable thoughts, or be lonely.

The fairy tales warn you: Do not go in, you who would eat will be eaten.

How close to human must the breathed-in air come before it develops a sense of shame or humor?

Every pocket I put you in had its hole.

A person falling does not, mid-plummet, look up.

We have to make friends with ourselves and be kind to those aspects of ourselves we like least. Learning to be kind to ourselves brings the discovery that fundamentally we are quite soft. We become hard when we habitually deny our own woundedness and blame others for causing our pain. In admitting our own hurt, we become soft and vulnerable.

No one is more vulnerable to fear than a man who keeps another in bondage. He will do anything to prevent justice from rearing its head — for he knows well what he deserves at the hands of those he subjugates.

Fatalistic Outlook The powerlessness and helplessness of experiencing cumulative trauma is often experienced as a belief that bad times or even death are right around the corner, that one is living on borrowed time, or that feelings of security and success cannot last.

Damn him. How could she ever respect him if he didn't even let her respect herself? A man that broke down her defenses with touch- with pleasure- well, that was just wrong.

One of these days, you're going to fall in love with some guy, and you're not going to know what to do with yourself.

I tour alone. There's no sound check, no back up. I stay with the hosts I am in a family home and it's really nourishing. I just have to remember after the show not to run out into the living room in my pyjamas. Every day, it's a new relationship being built. It's odd and wonderful.

A child who is protected from all controversial ideas is as vulnerable as a child who is protected from every germ. The infection, when it comes- and it will come- may overwhelm the system, be it the immune system or the belief system.