Cost of Exposure

January 15, 2026

I have an unusual ability to be vulnerable publicly.

It’s not something I was born with.

It’s something I cultivated.

Vulnerability used to not come easily to me.

Over the last decade, I worked intentionally on it—partly because Brené Brown teaches that vulnerability is essential to strong leadership, and partly because of the time I spent learning about leadership and storytelling from John C. Maxwell, who emphasizes the importance of adding value to people.

Somewhere along the way,

I learned that sharing pieces of my life,

especially the messy parts,

mattered to me.

Anxiety.

Depression.

Grief.

Healing.

The things most people don’t talk about publicly.

So I shared.

On Facebook.

On the radio.

In conversation.

I shared to let people know they weren’t alone.

To interrupt cycles of shame.

To offer insight from lived experience.

To do my best to add value to others.

For a long time, I felt a sense that I had a story that needed to be shared. And then life kept adding chapters. I never assumed it would happen. And I certainly never imagined it would happen this way.

What exists here now is an extension of that long-standing practice of vulnerability. It is also a place where I’ve processed the layers of experience that live inside me.

Sharing on Facebook is familiar. I can see who likes my posts and who comments. People talk to me directly about what I write. There is visible engagement and relational feedback.

This space is different.

There is far less interaction—and that’s intentional. Much of what I’ve written here was never meant for mass consumption. It was meant for me, and for anyone who happened to resonate with it.

Here, I don’t receive much external validation.

I don’t have many conversations about what I share.

I don’t always know whether people are reading because they care.

Instead, I have analytics.

I can see repeat visitors.

IP addresses.

Cities.

Devices and browsers.

Page views.

Dates and times.

Even session recordings.

Given the nature of what I’ve written, I’ll leave it to your imagination why some people return frequently—whether they relate deeply to the story, or whether it touches something closer, directly or indirectly.

Some readers have been here for months.

Some since the beginning.

Many stop by briefly and disappear.

Others arrive in noticeable waves,

often in response to particular pieces.

After spending time with this reality,

I’ve come to a clear conclusion:

some people visit because they connect,

and others visit to assess whether I am a threat—

or whether my story unsettles something close to home.

Both are true.

Both are a consequence of making this space public.

Both are the cost of choosing exposure.

I’ve learned that vulnerability opens the door to connection—and to consumption.

Now I find myself pondering whether I continue to share only here,

or whether it’s time to expand my impact and open new doors.

All of this has to be preparing me for the extraordinary.