Learning to Be Seen: Vulnerability After Rejection and Abandonment

Vulnerability

It’s one thing to be vulnerable when the world has held you gently. It’s another entirely when your history is laced with abandonment, rejection, or the ache of being unseen.

In those moments, vulnerability doesn’t feel brave, it feels dangerous. Like stepping into a spotlight only to be met with silence, or worse, recoil.

You offer something tender, a truth, a need, a part of yourself, and it lands with a thud. Not because you’re unworthy, but because others can’t always see you clearly. Sometimes they’re too caught up in their own stories. Sometimes your truth frightens them. Sometimes your defences, forged in fire, come with edges they don’t know how to hold.

And that’s the double bind. You’ve learned to protect yourself with sharpness, with wit, with distance. But those same defences can make people flinch. They see the thorns and miss the rose. They mistake your boundaries for hostility, your caution for coldness.

So, you’re left wondering, how do I let myself be known without being misunderstood? How do I share my vulnerability without feeling rejected when it’s not received?

There’s no easy answer, but maybe it starts with this. Your vulnerability is not a performance. It’s not something to be validated by applause. It’s a quiet offering, a gesture of truth, and its worth isn’t measured by how others respond.

Some people won’t be able to hold it. That’s not your failure.

Some people will be frightened by your edges. That’s not your fault.

And some, just a few, will see you as you are. They will understand that your sharpness is a sign of survival, not cruelty. That your tenderness is hard-won. That your truth is sacred.