E Ellis Allen (girlonstilts.com)

To me, showing vulnerability is like holding a teeny-tiny nail for someone swinging an industrial-sized sledgehammer—what are the chances your thumb and pointer fingers won’t get clobbered when the hammer drops?

I haven’t always been this way. In my early childhood, I was considered a crybaby, wailing at the drop of a hat. So why am I so opposite now?

I feel calcified, impenetrable to outside stimuli. I’ve spent years creating this hard candied shell that I worry I’ll crack whenever something melts underneath.

I blame experience and my kids—oh, those kids! Is it because I diluted myself into thinking that my kids wouldn’t be able to handle life or navigate hardships if I was too soft? Had I forced them into holding that small nail while I whack-a-mole-d their experience with my vulnerability-thwarting hammer? Yikes! I hope not. This wasn’t what I was going for. Although I can see maybe I wasn’t my children’s only influencer.

In the Spring of my son’s Junior year in high school, he took a few months off from the grueling football schedule and segued into the supercharged demands of Track and Field.

My husband and I watched from the stands while kids sprinted by on the Track. We noticed our kid waiting for his race in the center green space. He was spending extra time stretching out one of his hamstrings. No big deal, we thought. He knows what he’s doing. Sports year-round was what he did from the time he was a toddler. Anything body related was his specialty, we assumed.

Finally, his group was called to the 200-meter sprint. The kids lined up in their lanes: feet on blocks, head down, ass up. The Starting Pistol shot. Boom! They were off!

Waves of applause rang through the stadium as the boys sailed past. Our boy was in the lead…

While my husband stomped down the metal steps, dodging and weaving to the finish line to capture Nate’s triumph on his camera, I remained behind, taking videos on my phone.

I zoomed in as my son rounded the track curve onto the home stretch. That’s when I saw an extra skip in his gait…then a full hop.

The boys around him caught up. Nate struggled. Hop. Hop. Hop.

The finish line tape was strewn across the end, and my kid threw himself headlong into it. And then laid face first on the Track as the rest of the participants sped through. My kid didn’t get up—couldn’t get up.

A crew swooped in with a stretcher. Picked Nate up and lifted him to the side. His Track Coach was worried, and so was my husband and me. Nate was in horrible pain, evident from the color drained from his face and his inability to sit up.

Immediately, my son’s football buddies surrounded him, cheering at his triumph. He had ripped his hamstring and managed to take 3rd place. They were thrilled he had fought through the pain. That’s what football players were taught—it’s how they performed. The more torn up they were on the field, the better they proved their skill and value–Walk-it-off their mantra.

However, my son’s Track Coach seethed, “Nate! When you feel a pop, you stop!” The football players laughed at this. “Freaking Football Players!” The Coach retorted.

At the beginning of the race, my son started off in the top 3. Within milliseconds, he had surpassed the other two. By the time he rounded the curve, the stopwatch indicated he had made State Championship. When his hamstring snapped, he had beat the fastest runner on record in the State.

Had he been trained to ignore all pain, to pretend he was okay, to focus on the endpoint, not the journey, to walk-it-off at all costs? Yes.

This injury marked the beginning of the end of any college football scholarship or potential football career. Several other injuries happened, and that part of Nate’s life was over, for better or worse, we don’t know.

This idea to ignore the pain, to fake it ’til you make it, to walk-it-off and get on with it, is kind of insane! It’s the same kind of training Seal teams and Covert Ops dispensed in the military. They are trained to anticipate, target, and destroy all vulnerabilities of the enemy and of themselves. Why had I allowed this sentiment to be born, nurtured, and grown within my child?

And I didn’t just do it to my son! How often had I told my daughter not to cry? To pretend everything was fine when it obviously wasn’t. How many times had I recoiled at the thought she cried at work because she was having a rotten day?

I’m confident I’m not the only parent who has done this. It’s a wonder we don’t live among sociopaths—“I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti” (Dr. Hannibal Lecter- The Silence of the Lambs).

What I’m starting to realize is that toughening up, living inside this hard candy shell isn’t what life is about.

What can we learn about each other, about ourselves, when we are so calloused that we ignore the pain of others and mock the vulnerabilities we are surrounded by?

I have started on a journey of self-discovery. I want my writing not done from a poisonous pen but from an inky, Felt Tipped point of feeling.

I want to feel and understand the world. It’s hard edges and overwhelming bits. But I’m better having felt an experience, having shared an experience with someone else, than pretending I don’t know what fear, difficulty, and overwhelming feel like.

It’s not my stubborn, calcified self that translates into a beautiful life, and vulnerability doesn’t equal death. It’s the vulnerabilities that makeup life.