The Shell-Less Creature: A Lesson In Vulnerability
Photo by Isabel Galvez via Unsplash.
This month inside The School for Humaning Well, we're exploring a pillar that feels, to me, like the heart of everything: Vulnerability as a Superpower.
I opened our class weekend with a short video by Andrea Gibson—Poet Laureate, spoken word artist, activist, and one of the most honest humans I've ever encountered. In it, they offer what they call scientific proof that vulnerability could save the world.
Here's the proof: any species with a protective shell evolves very slowly. Turtles, for example, have remained virtually the same since the beginning of turtle time. But the octopus—arguably the most evolved creature on the planet—evolved at a lightning-quick pace precisely because of its vulnerability. Because it was shellless, soft, exposed. It was forced to develop superpowers to survive.
In their words: “When we humans are guarded, defensive, closed off, and shut down, we stop growing. But when we are soft, open, and vulnerable, we become stronger, wiser, and more compassionate people daily.”
I've been sitting with their words ever since, because I think they point directly to something most of us were never taught about vulnerability—or about receiving.
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We Didn't Build Our Shells For Nothing
At some point, early on in our development, there were experiences that felt too overwhelming. The mind—doing exactly what minds do—labeled them: this is dangerous, this is bad, this is too much.And then it did something else: it formed a conclusion. Not just about the experience, but about us.
This is my fault. I did something wrong. I’m bad, unlovable… and not enough.
These conclusions—what I'll call distorted thinking—don't stay small. They grow.They form vast threads of stories to prove the mind's theory: every piece of evidence the world seems to offer confirms what we already believe. And here's the thing about how life works that most people don't understand: external reality mirrors internal reality. Life reflects back what we believe to be true—not THE truth, but our truth, the one running quietly underneath everything.
So, over time, the distorted thinking becomes the hard shell. And we wonder why we keep getting experiences we don't want.
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What This Has Looked Like For Me
For a while, the strategies I'd relied on and believed were the reason for my business success stopped producing the same results. And without my being fully aware of it, my mind decided: those strategies are bad. They don't work anymore. Don't use them.
So I stopped. And then, because no money was coming in, the story grew:I can't make money. I thought I was good at this. Turns out I'm not. Maybe this was never meant to be a life-long business.
And then—because that's exactly how distorted thinking works—life started reflecting back evidence. That person just enrolled their highest billing client. That one went viral on Instagram. That one just launched their book and made a bestseller list. Everyone else is thriving. See? There is something wrong with you. See how right I am about you?
I was suffering. And I didn't even fully know it, because it just felt true.This is the thing about distorted thinking: it doesn't announce itself as a story. It announces itself as reality.
It wasn't until a coaching session where my coach reflected it back to me—it sounds like you're believing you can't make money—that something cracked open. And I saw it. Not because she argued me out of it, or helped me replace the belief with a better one. But because I saw it. I saw the story for what it was: a story. And just like that, the whole thing dissolved and I immediately felt lighter, freer, and more open.
That's not how I thought change worked. But that's how it actually works.
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A Ball Of Yarn
Here's what I've come to understand about the thick threads of distorted thinking. They become like a tight ball of yarn.
If you try to pull one thread, the knot just tightens. You can spend years working on individual beliefs, managing them, replacing them, trying to think better thoughts. And some of that may have value. But it's still operating on the surface.
What the distorted thinking is actually doing—all of it, every thread—is protecting something at the center. A vulnerability. A foundational misunderstanding that feels so tender, so threatening, that the mind has built an entire architecture around never having to feel it.
I can't make money was protecting something much older. A confusion between safety and worth. A belief that my value had to be proven, repeatedly, in measurable ways.
The way through isn't pulling the threads. It's opening your heart toward the center.
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Vulnerability, Redefined
This is what vulnerability actually is. Not exposure for its own sake. Not performing your wounds. Not being soft in every circumstance with every person.
It's honesty. It's open-heartedness. It's the willingness to turn toward what the mind has been armoring against—the fear, the grief, the old misunderstanding—and say: I see you. I feel you. You can be here.
And here's what I've discovered, again and again, in my own experience and in working with my clients and students: the feelings we've been most afraid to feel are never as fatal as the mind promised they would be.When we stop running from them and actually meet them—in the body, as sensation, as energy, without the story layered on top—they move. They shift. They reveal what's underneath.
And what's underneath is almost always something that makes sense. Something innocent. A child who decided, from the evidence available to them at the time, that they were the problem.
Meeting that (again and again)—with presence, with open-heartedness, without trying to fix it—is what undoes the knot. Not thread by thread. All at once, sometimes. A new seeing. A dissolving.
That is receiving. Not necessarily getting the experiences we most want—though, paradoxically, that is often the end result of turning toward our pain: a deeper level of freedom. Opening our heart towards the experience that is here.
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Not A Better Shell
The octopus didn't develop its superpowers by finding a more protective shell. It developed them by remaining soft in a world that could have hardened it.
I think about that a lot lately—how many of us have unconsciously developed a shell—a strategy, a plan, a certainty, an identity—when what was actually being asked was to stay open. To not turn away from the pain, but to drop into it. To trust that presence could do what management never could.
As we move in this direction we discover that pain is only a bridge back to our wholeness. It's painful, until it isn't. And sometimes the moment we see through fresh perspective, we are overcome with laughter at the idea that who we are is that limited belief.
This is the conversation we'll expand and experience together in August.
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Join Me For The Gift Of The Open Heart
The Gift of the Open Heart: A Weekend of Receiving is an in-person immersive weekend—limited to 20 participants—in Granada Hills, CA, August 28–30, 2026.
We'll spend three days practicing exactly this: how to turn toward what the mind wants to armor against, how to let the body's intelligence lead, how to open the heart to whatever is here— including the stuff we'd rather not feel—and discover what becomes available on the other side.
Peace. Sweetness. Beauty. Abundance. Steadiness. Grounding. And more.
The weekend includes three virtual integration sessions in September to support what is felt and uncovered.
Spots are filling. Early bird pricing ends June 15th.
If this is calling to you, I'd love to have you there.
➝ You can learn more and reserve your spot here.
And if you have questions before you decide, just reply to this email. I'm here.
With loving,
Amber
P.S. Since that session with my coach—since seeing the distorted thinking for what it was—something has shifted in my business in ways I couldn't have manufactured. New directions and opportunities have been arriving. Creativity that had gone quiet is flowing again, including the birth of this workshop. Conversations that feel alive and aligned. Clarity around the next level of my work. And yes, clients. Not because I found a better strategy. Because I stopped pulling on threads and opened my heart toward the center. That's the invitation of this work—and of this upcoming weekend workshop.
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