Maybe what we need is more “active” vulnerability

I have been thinking a lot about trust this week. I am thinking about the group of people who bared some of their rawest parts of their hearts in an exercise we did about values and our thresholds of tolerance for being challenged. About the peers who are processing some major life events as they…

2018: The “Aha”s

2018 has been quite an year, with a lot of perspective shifts. Not immune to the spirit of reflection that comes from the year ending and my birthday being close together, I decided to do the exercise I end all my facilitation sessions with: listing all the "aha" moments from 2018, and some of the biggest…

A starter guide to being vulnerable

(Or rather, a guide on how not to not be vulnerable) Context: In 2015, I spoke to strangers about love, during which, vulnerability emerged as one of the most common things everyone spoke about. "For me, love is when I can be vulnerable with someone" - most people had a variation of this statement.  I…

What I learnt about vulnerability experimenting with it: Part 2

Lessons I learnt about vulnerability from consciously choosing to be as vulnerable as I could for some time. With a little activity in the end if you feel like experimenting. Late 2015. I had spent a few months now speaking to people about love. The word "vulnerability", not surprisingly, had shown up often in my…

Finding my feminine in my feminism.

This past year, I have been growing into my feminism, and being comfortable as it grows to become a much more prominent part of me. This past year, I am re-discovering what being feminine means to me. It isn't the yin to your yang, and it certainly isn't the dainty and delicate version of soft.…

How to have better (and meaningful) conversations.

One of the questions I get asked most commonly when I talk about my work is "how do you get people to tell you all these intimate stories of their lives?". Umm, I don't really know. I don't have a strategy. I just love talking to people and have been doing this for really long,…

What does it mean to say “me too”?

Me too. Despite all my skepticism for social media campaigns, this one felt important to participate in. To acknowledge the fact that I have struggled to say "me too" in the past, and never quite known how to. ... 9 years ago, a security guard groped me and pinned me against the wall before I…

I was craving kindness today.

I think there are themes to our lives. My mum told me that if you are in touch with your body well enough, your cravings tell you what you really need right now. Not the cravings for chocolate and maggi, she'd remind me, if you get your body used to the good healthy diet, it…

What I learnt about vulnerability, talking and experimenting with it

Part 1: Understanding vulnerability (DO try this at home) It's kind of hard to talk about love without discussing vulnerability. Or so I realised when I interviewed strangers about love. For most people I spoke with, not surprisingly, vulnerability was something that was reserved for their intimate/ close relationships. For anyone who has ever been…

Our Feminism is better than Yours.

My friend arrived for dinner visibly agitated. In one of his leadership classes, one of his classmates had shared an example of sexism at work - as an intern in a fancy firm, she was apparently kept out of the conversation in her first week by all the men she was working for. "That's not…