Editor’s note: Consider this a postcard from a previous self. (2012) The tone is punchier; the heart is the same—share the truth you’re living and let it shape what you teach.
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I don’t just write for you—I write for me, too.
I write to remember who I want to become; who I aspire to be. This is my case for why vulnerability matters.
As student and teacher, I reflect on the days before this one.
I question the questionable and fold one idea over another.
There’s an “ah-ha.” An “Oh—I get it.”
Pen hits paper, and waiting becomes creation.
It’s a vulnerable affair—
being exposed, open to judgment and criticism.
Here’s the twist:
even if you’re not pouring your heart onto the internet,
even if you’re not talking about Big Ideas on a stage,
you, too, are simultaneously a student and a teacher.
Forever vulnerable, whether you realize it or not.
“This is the responsibility you inevitably assume the moment you accept any premise at all… once you have developed a thought system of any kind you live by it and therefore teach it.”
— A Course in Miracles
The question isn’t whether you teach—there’s no choice in that.
The question is: what will you teach?
Where is your spirit rooted?
What do you want to learn?
Each situation is an invitation to show us who you are—and who we are to you.
What do you want to know?
What do you want us to know about you?
These are questions worth marinating on.
These are lessons worth learning.
Because you teach what is teaching you.
And the world needs your evolution and clarity of heart.
And this is, very much, work worth doing.
XO
xo!
She is the creator of The Motherhood Setup, a framework for understanding how the Motherhood Fantasy, Good Girl Conditioning, and Invisible Labor collide to leave so many Mothers overwhelmed. Her work asks what changes when we begin to make the invisible visible, Count the Work, and recognize Motherhood as both a joy and a job.
Explore Dr. Dowling's work on modern Motherhood