What Does It Mean To Live Vulnerably Together?

Hello to our friends and community!

Though it’s been quite a while since we’ve been actively running our blog and Facebook live streams, we have not fallen completely off the face of the earth – in fact, we’ve just traversed more of it recently! Many of you know the basics of our story already, but here’s the quickest way to bring you up to speed to today: we got married in December of 2017, we were blessed to spend a year in Seattle learning how to rest and gathering some incredible tools for building unity, and we are now residing in the jungle of Maui for a few months until we return to our beloved Los Angeles this summer. In the meantime, a lot has been gestating, which brings us to this fresh and exciting new start of Live Vulnerably!

Our goal with this relaunch is not just to “re-brand,” but to encourage the ever-growing community around us to:

• Connect
• Create
• Listen
• Love…

Vulnerably.

Simply put: we believe every voice has value, no matter how messy the storyteller is. For us, “messy” has happened a lot in our first year of marriage. Don’t worry, we’ll dig deeper into that on our blog and YouTube channel in the coming months. After all, the name of the game is vulnerability. But maybe the best place to start is with this:

What is Vulnerability?

You’re probably familiar with the term used in myriad ways among many different schools of thought. You’ve heard the TED talks, you’ve no doubt been inspired by Brené Brown, and maybe you’ve even cracked the dictionary to find a textbook definition. We’ve talked about it before, too. But for the sake of the new Live Vulnerably, our “thesis” is simple:

Vulnerability is allowing the messy, weak, and unflattering parts of ourselves to be seen for the sake of knowing what it is to be fully loved and love fully in return.

We believe freedom comes from being unashamed of that which is still in process, the image that is not social-media-perfect, and the areas where you fail, even if it’s failing for the thousandth time. Vulnerability is not just a one-off exercise, but a necessary recurring choice to make in how we think, speak, and act – the key to unlocking wholeness, realizing deeper intimacy, and discover genuine connection in our relationships. Lastly, being vulnerable and unashamed to let weaknesses show is in fact among the strongest things we can do: one of the core building blocks in finding our true voices as creators, artists, visionaries, leaders, and world-changers.

Over the last few months, we’ve given a lot of consideration to what it looks like to live with vulnerability as one of the core values in all we do. Of course, there must exist wisdom in sharing stories and experiences with vulnerability, as it is not our desire to simply vent and complain and air all our dirty laundry together. Furthermore, we believe vulnerability from a place of desiring growth is actually a key strength, as it exists to galvanize creatives, adventurers, couples, singles, and really everyone into finding their authentic place in the world around them. We’ve been working on how to distill our vision into something that positively impacts the community we have, giving value to each individual’s voice in the midst of a culture that all too often can polarize people and breed hostile environments of disagreement.

Live Vulnerably is our way of bringing each of our unique voices into a common space, creating a platform where together we can speak, listen, learn, be messy and in process together, and be ok with not having all the answers. On our Instagram, Facebook, YouTube channel, and blog, we’ll be teaching on what we’re learning, we’ll be learning from others’ experiences, and we’ll be highlighting many of you who are doing the same. Our content will revolve around the journey to connect, create, listen, and love… vulnerably. We’re in this together.

Here at Live Vulnerably, you’re safe. Young, old, black, white, gay, straight, religious, rejected, hurting, thriving, or anywhere in between: your voice and your vision has value. Join our community @LiveVulnerably to start connecting, and use #LVstorytellers on social media to make your voice known.

We want to know you. And we want you to know we are with you and for you.

With love,
Coburn + Alicia