On Vulnerability (Heidi Kolk)

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Early last summer, my husband and I found ourselves in a season of health-related hardship. What we thought was the return of a known illness turned out to be much worse––something much harder to contend with, and something that had already caused a host of related problems we knew nothing about. Each week of the summer brought a fleet of more-painful challenges, and as the start of the new semester approached, we found ourselves scrambling to deal with difficulties we had just learned to name.

But we could hardly stop to process. Our oldest son was starting his first year of middle school; our younger sons were busy with a hundred school activities, and my husband, with work and culinary school; and I was facing the largest pile-up of professional obligations I had ever experienced. During an especially harried three-week period in which I delivered three public talks and traveled for a conference, we learned of yet another setback, and I verged into mental collapse.

The effects of my stress had begun to manifest as physical pain and episodes of panic, and I was experiencing both as I walked to class one early October day. As my students assembled around a seminar table, I fumbled with my backpack and discovered I could no longer form sentences, nor recall what was in my class plan. Panic set in, and I prayed a wordless prayer of desperation. 

What happened next was deeply strange––a kind of out-of-body experience: I found myself talking with my students––or rather listening to myself talk––calmly, collectedly––about what was happening to us, what our family was enduring. I didn’t disclose the details, but I did name the health issue in question, and describe our general feelings of pain and uncertainty. I heard myself ask for their patience and consideration in the weeks to come, and thank them for listening.

I don’t remember much of what was said in the discussion that followed, but I do recall the sense of mortification that followed me home. I had unwittingly shown vulnerability––only ten minutes’ worth of it, just a mini-confession, but still: a kind of vulnerability I had never allowed myself in twenty years of teaching, an act that now seemed untoward, self-indulgent, risky. I spent the weekend worrying that my disclosures would be compromising for all of us; that I had doomed the whole enterprise, or violated some unwritten academic code.

But then, in the midst of true despondence, a marvelous thing happened: I started to hear from my students. Each of them, even the most reserved, or apparently disengaged––every single one––reached out to offer expressions of care and concern over the course of a week. Most sent emails, but a few approached me in person after class or office hours. Almost to a one, they started by thanking me for sharing––for trusting them enough to do so––and for confirming their suspicions that faculty are in fact human beings. A few said it was the first time they had ever had a professor “be real” with them. And more than a few confided about their own health issues, or feelings of anxiety or fear or exhaustion.

These were not therapy sessions; they were moments of shared humanity. Some led to meaningful conversations about related issues, such as the slow-moving mental-health catastrophe that has been playing out on campus in recent years, and the atmosphere of competitiveness and pressure that keeps so many at the university from asking for help. I came to see the outpouring of care, and the resulting bonds that formed, as an expression of God’s abiding grace during our season of hardship.

I never revisited the subject of my self-disclosure again, but the whole course seemed to have been transformed by it. Students showed unusual receptivity––to one another, to me, to the course material––all semester. It was as if they had been given permission to take their studies personally. They were more candid in discussion, more willing to disclose it when they didn’t quite grasp something, and more receptive to the challenges of the course, which probed such painful subjects as the #MeToo movement, the refugee crisis, and the history of lynching. This made all the difference in a class with the title Haunted by History: it seemed we were no longer speaking in abstractions when we spoke of traumas past, or asked what it means to think of American culture as not only dogged but defined by problematic, contested, or suppressed histories that disrupt social and political life. And even when the discussions became intensely personal, as when we drew connections between Ta-Nehisi Coates’s probing critique of American racial politics in Between the World and Me and their own experiences on campus, they showed a degree of emotional honesty I have rarely seen before.  

I have reflected on these experiences many times since––for example, when seeking support from family and friends late in the semester, which required us not only to speak candidly about our personal pains, but to confront the feelings of shame and fear that often follow self-disclosure. We have been  learning to accept our weaknesses, and to receive others’ acts of love––and to see both as evidence of God’s grace.

And now, in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak and the closure of the university, I find myself thinking about vulnerability yet again, for it now seems to be the central fact of our lives, the hard truth we must confront at every turn. Vulnerability not just of our immune systems or our daily comforts, but of our governmental and educational and economic institutions, our global supply chains, our social fabric. And of course vulnerability of a more existential kind––the sort that leads us to contemplate our mortality and our core beliefs. To judge by the creeping panic, all this vulnerability makes many of us intensely uncomfortable, and shows just how unpracticed we are, both as individuals and as a nation, at acknowledging our human limitations and dependency on one another. 

I have tried to be mindful of all of this as I have moved into remote instruction for my courses. This is hardly an easy or straightforward matter, especially for an introverted academic. But it has given me some priorities. First and foremost, I have made room for a shared experience of this crisis moment––even when it has produced awkwardness and silence. Each time we connect online, whether for discussion or office hours, I ask my students how they’re doing, tell them how I’m doing­, and share just a little about what life has been like for me and my family in recent weeks. This ritual of care is rarely if ever a feature of university instruction, but I am starting to wonder why. When I invite them to share one thing that has brought them comfort or joy, or I acknowledge that they are facing painful situations, I feel like I am simply recognizing a vulnerability that was always there. 

When we talk, I do not assume that my students are Christian, so I do not share this scripture with them. But given my own experiences, I find myself returning here: 

I sought the LORD and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them. -- Psalms 34: 1-7 (ESV)

When I have been most fearful, Psalm 34 has brought me comfort. The psalmist captures well the complex psychology of vulnerability––including the overwhelming desire to be understood in one’s suffering, and the constant risk of shame. I take comfort in the promise that the LORD will deliver the righteous from their afflictions (v. 19), and also, as someone who has felt physically vulnerable in recent months, that He will protect their bones from being broken (v. 20). But it is the astonishing idea of a LORD who “draws near to the brokenhearted”––who turns his “eyes “toward the righteous, and his ears toward their cry” (v. 15, 17), and even “encamps around those who fear him”––that I cling to most in this hour of vulnerability.

I have felt that comfort. I have known that nearness. And now, as much as ever, I hold to that promise of the Lord.

Heidi Kolk is a Carver Project faculty fellow, an assistant professor in the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts, and Assistant Vice Provost of Academic Assessment at Washington University in St. Louis.

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