If you put shame in a petri dish, it needs three ingredients to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence, and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in the petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can't survive.

But I don't think it's as dangerous, scary, or terrifying as getting to the end of our lives and wondering, what if I would have shown up?

I wasn't really testing it on myself as much as I was learning from other people about what it meant to live and love with your whole heart, and then thinking, oh my god, I'm not doing that.

Authenticity is also about the courage and the vulnerability to say, "Yeah, I'll try it. I feel pretty uncomfortable and I feel a little vulnerable, but I'll try it!"

Rather than sitting on the sidelines & hurling judgment & advice, we must dare to show up & let ourselves be seen. This is vulnerability. This is daring greatly.

Let ourselves be seen, deeply seen, vulnerably seen, to love with our whole hearts, even though there's no guarantee... to practice gratitude and joy in those moments of terror, to be this vulnerable means that we’re alive.

Courage is a value. My faith is the organizing principle in my life and what underpins my faith is courage and love, and so I have to be in the arena if I'm going to live in alignment with my values.