Within us lie our deepest desires, hopes and dreams. They are those things we imagined to be beautiful, fulfilling and important expressions of ourselves, and begin as far back as memory can go. They are treasured parts of us. Also within us lie our deepest fears, those responses, reactions and perceptions of trauma that lie within, often dysfunctional or irrational and usually, based in a belief that is not true. These deep, private secrets are protected more than any other part of us. To share them makes us vulnerable to being hurt or shamed. And so, they are only brought into the light with those lucky few that who we feel we can trust with our hearts: our spouses.

Part of human need is to share ourselves, connect, and be accepted. But when we love, we trust. When we trust, we share those deeper feelings. That leaves us vulnerable to being hurt. The other part of being human is, in relationships, we will betray that trust. We have all been hurt, but we have all hurt as well.

Intimacy grows when we share with our partners the deepest parts of ourselves. The trust in place, we feel safe to begin to peel back the layers of our personalities from the superficial down to the core. We expose ourselves to them layer by layer, looking for validation, acceptance and understanding. This level of intimacy is transformative for us, for our relationships as are building them. But it is that same intimacy that gives us the power to expose and abuse the other's vulnerabilities, inflicting great emotional pain. It is the constant violation of our vulnerabilities that leads to divorce. They are awakened from their safe slumber and are like exposed nerves, demanding our attention in jolts of excruciating emotional turmoil and pain.

However, our vulnerability is also one of our greatest teachers. Because we are taught by life to protect our vulnerabilities, we sometimes bury them so deeply that we lose track of them. Sometimes we overcompensate to such an extreme degree that we even deny their existence. But this time of trauma and pain bring up every one of them, reminding us of pains from years long gone. Our natural reaction is to stop the pain, get out of it, run from it. A place of extreme emotional pain and vulnerability is a difficult place to be. But if, in small moments, we can be present and aware to it as well, then we gather important information that we may not otherwise have access to. This is a time of discovering a part of ourselves that we buried long ago. As the seeds deep within the darkness of the Earth slowly but surely grow over time, so do our old, neglected, painful experiences.

Vulnerability began when we believed there was a boogeyman under the bed or that there was a monster in the closet.

It began when some kid at school called us fat or ugly, when we didn't make the team, when the girl or boy rejected our budding interest in them, when we thought we were unloved and no one cared, when our parents divorced and we believed it was our fault, when we didn't get the job and we took the rejection personally. When we believe these things, we spend the rest of our lives trying to hide it. When someone comes close to our vulnerable side, we become defensive and immediately go back to an old pattern that has worked for us: we overcompensate by being the smartest, prettiest, thinnest, strongest; or by self-destructive behaviors such as drinking, doing drugs or cutting.

There are as many ways to protect our vulnerabilities as there are people on Earth.

We spend our entire lifetimes hiding those vulnerable parts from people, hoping they won't notice our flaws. We create an entire life around it, choose careers and make relationship choices based on it. But all those beliefs about ourselves that we live with as truth, aren't. They are stories we only accept as truth. Imagine all the time and energy spent in a lifetime doing things and making choices based in fear and lies! It is an exhausting and endless pursuit, because it never was the truth to begin with.

Deep inside we all have a core to us that is perfect and Divine, gentle and loving, and can find beauty in all it sees.

That is who we are. That is the truth. Sometimes we see glimmers of this part of us when we are in those places of peace: tilling a garden, petting a cat, holding a child, helping a friend. We can see ourselves in prayer and meditation, or simply sitting still in nature and be-ing.

The more we can see and feel our vulnerabilities, the more information we have to work on which will help us redefine in our lives, find the real truth in it, and release it. The more we can release, the closer we are to that perfect core inside. This pain can actually lead us to our deepest authenticity, inner peace and a joy beyond anything we've ever known. This is a chance that may not come again. After all, how often do we really do that deep, core work?

Like many, I am not very good at journalling. So I devised another way of collecting information about the important times in my life: email! I have volumes of snippets of my life experiences tucked away in "files" in my email box. As I would write about the divorce to my trusted friends and family in other states, I would keep some that "felt" important.

These serve well as a journal so that I can look back and see very clearly where the vulnerabilities lie. Once I could identify what they were and just how deeply ingrained they were in my personality, I could heal them. I would take these seeds of blame, shame and lies I held as beliefs to my therapist and look at them, some for the very first time in my life. Some of those "seeds" had grown into a mangled overgrown mess of brush and tumbleweeds. But regardless of how big they were, I was able to pull a few out by the roots.

Isn't it interesting that by exposing our vulnerabilities to our ex-spouses, we also handed them the very thing that will eventually heal us!

There is no need to fear anything. Everything is here for our growth and learning, leading us to our highest Self, our highest good, if we allow it to. This time of transition is such a gift in so many ways. If we have the courage to look into ourselves more fully and with loving compassion, then there is no limit to the potential of tomorrow!

Us