Vulnerability is Freedom

Ten cities later, here’s what I know for sure: your real life starts when you stop pretending.

I was twenty-one, standing in Victoria Station in London, watching my friends spill out of trains from Paris and Amsterdam with backpacks and weekend stories.
I clutched a laptop bag and a stack of thesis notes.

I’d been the first in my master’s program to land a job, but it was in a different city. While everyone else was traveling and soaking in their last few months of freedom, I was commuting between Brighton and Cardiff, working full-time and finishing my thesis.

It was exactly what I’d been chasing since I was nineteen: independence. Proof I could take care of myself. But independence without connection is just being alone somewhere new. And that’s what I was: alone. Deeply alone.

Photo by Carolin Thiergart on Unsplash

Independent, but invisible

When I left my student friends behind in Cardiff, I thought I’d grow into this confident, worldly version of myself. Instead, I cried on the bus home everyday from missing out, being lonely and tired. At work, I made myself small. I was good at my job, but I stayed quiet, never letting people see more than the polished (mysterious) professional version of me. Somewhere deep down, I didn’t think I was interesting or good enough to truly belong.

Outside of work, I clung to the familiar… people I already knew, situations where I felt safe. I remember going to a rugby game with friends who were loud and boisterous. I stayed on the edges, blending into the background.

It wasn’t that they were unkind, they were amazing… I had just decided that I’m not fun or loud enough to belong here. They will anyway see through it, so I may as well hide now.

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I reinvented myself endlessly.

Chasing whatever I thought would make me fit in.
I dressed the way I thought was “cool” instead of what I actually liked.
I coloured my hair in every shade of the rainbow, hoping someone would notice me. Once, I even got a lower lip piercing to impress a guy. His reaction was terrible, and I laughed it off, but inside I felt ridiculous. I still have second-hand embarrassment thinking about it.

I changed my opinions to match the room instead of saying what I actually thought. I said yes to plans that drained me because I didn’t know how to say no. I went along with things other people wanted to do, all while quietly shelving the things I loved.

The result? Exhaustion. Resentment. And a string of jobs that burnt me out, because I didn’t know how to say, I’m not happy. This isn’t working for me.

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I carried that pattern with me from city to city.

I lived in Singapore for six years, but I made friends, but only to a certain depth. I avoided hard conversations, quietly stepping away when things felt uncomfortable. In relationships, I’d morph into whoever I thought the other person wanted until resentment made me leave.

I thought I was protecting myself. In reality, I was locking myself out of my own life. You can’t belong anywhere if you never let yourself be seen.

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Jakarta was different.

I met a woman who was so unapologetically herself… that something about her gave me the encouragement to stop hiding.

And as I did, my life expanded. My friendships deepened. I had conversations I couldn’t have imagined before.

One afternoon, I found myself in my garden with a group of women from all over the world. We spent hours talking about dreams, heartbreaks, and fears. No small talk, no performance. Just the kind of conversations that make you feel lighter, more alive, more seen.

On another afternoon in Jakarta, I was sitting in my friend’s living room with her, a refugee from Afghanistan, and another friend from Tanzania. We were laughing, as we compared whose life had been the hardest. Of course, the refugee won.

Some might call it trauma bonding. I call it freedom: the kind that comes from being able to tell the truth about your life without editing yourself.

That’s when I realised: vulnerability isn’t weakness. It’s the doorway to belonging.

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Vulnerability has shaped everything since.

It’s how I found love: an old friend who became my husband after a single, unguarded conversation. It’s how I’ve built friendships that can weather hard truths. It’s how I’ve navigated motherhood, by letting people in on the messy days instead of hiding them.
It’s how I’ve deepened my relationship with my parents and begun to feel at home in my own skin.

It hasn’t always been comfortable. But it’s given me a life where I can breathe.
A life with a diversity of connection, richer conversations, and a self I no longer feel the need to hide.

Vulnerability isn’t weakness.
Vulnerability is freedom.