I believe that owning our worthiness is the act of acknowledging that we are sacred. Perhaps embracing vulnerability and overcoming numbing is ultimately about the care and feeding of our spirits

Vulnerability is not weakness. And that myth is profoundly dangerous... I define vulnerability as emotional risk, exposure, uncertainty. It fuels our daily lives.

The two most powerful words when we're in struggle: me too.

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.

The difficult thing is that vulnerability is the first thing I look for in you and the last thing I'm willing to show you. In you, it's courage and daring. In me, it's weakness.

If we want to be able to move through the difficult disappointments, the hurt feelings, and the heartbreaks that are inevitable in a fully lived life, we can't equate defeat with being unworthy of love, belonging and joy. If we do, we'll never show up and try again.

Someone asked me very recently why I have 8 million views on TED - "your work resonates, what are you doing?" What I think my contribution is, what I do well, is I name experiences that are very universal that no one really talks about. That's the researcher in me; that's really part of being a grounded theory researcher - putting names to concepts and experiences that people have. That's the researcher part.