I never chose vulnerability. It chose me.
When I was injured in December, my carefully constructed professional identity shattered along with it. Suddenly, I was the vulnerable one—not the communities and conditions I'd given my attention to supporting.
We often speak of serving at-risk or vulnerable communities, as if vulnerability were somehow their defining characteristic rather than a shared human condition. We imagine ourselves to be somehow stronger, and often don't bring the fullness of ourselves to our work in order to maintain a seemingly safe distance from our own vulnerability.
"These people are going through enough - they don't need to hear about my first world problems."
Yet suffering is relative, and the truth is, I've yet to meet anyone who hasn't experienced life-altering suffering at some point in their lives.
But for so many years I believed that my clients, colleagues and partners expected or needed me to be six foot tall and bulletproof. So I stood tall, and processed my rage, grief, and fear in private.
By which I mean on my best days I would journal, or play the piano, talk to a therapist, or just quietly cry, and on my worst I would drink, get high, and howl at the moon — or those closest to me.
Then my body made the choice my mind had refused: complete surrender.
Unable to stand, bathe myself, dress myself, or take care of myself in any real way, I experienced vulnerability not as a strategic leadership choice but as an inescapable reality. And in that forced vulnerability came a revelation that has transformed how I think about impact work entirely.
The Vulnerability Paradox
This, I realised, is the paradox at the heart of vulnerability that we would all do well to acknowledge:
Genuine vulnerability exists on a spectrum—from conscious choice to complete collapse of our carefully constructed narratives.
's research has shown, vulnerability can be a deliberate practice of courage, requiring tremendous strength and discernment. In my experience, however, there's another dimension to vulnerability that's equally profound: sometimes it isn't a choice at all—it's thrust upon us when our beliefs of control and competence shatter against reality.
And it is precisely in these moments—whether chosen with courage or forced by circumstance—that we discover our most authentic connections.
Lying in hospital, utterly dependent on others, I couldn't maintain the professional distance I'd cultivated for decades. The façade crumbled not because I bravely chose vulnerability, but because I had no other option. And in that crumbling, something unexpected happened.
My relationships changed. Not just with loved ones, but with colleagues, clients, and the communities I claimed to serve. Without the armour of expertise and capability, I could finally see the fundamental truth that had been obscured by my beliefs about myself:
I am always vulnerable, whether I acknowledge it or not.
Trust and the Illusion of Distance
The impact sector has built elaborate mechanisms to maintain distance between "helpers" and "helped." We use clinical language, professional boundaries, and institutional structures to separate ourselves from those we serve.
But my injury stripped away this pretence, and I remembered that trust emerges not from competence but from shared humanity.
When my therapist talked about previous challenges in his closest relationships, our connection deepened immediately. When my neurologist said, despite all of the tests "I don't know, but here's what we can try," I trusted her judgment more, not less. When friends admitted they were at a loss for what to say or how to help, their honest presence became far more meaningful than any rehearsed comfort could have been.
These weren't strategic choices they made to "build trust" with me. They were genuine moments of human connection in the face of undeniable limitation.
Perhaps most startling was how my relationships with clients, colleagues, and partners deepened when I finally abandoned the exhausting pretence of having everything figured out. Far from undermining my credibility ...
acknowledging uncertainty and limitation created space for more truthful dialogue, more meaningful connection, and a more compassionate way to achieve results.
For years, I'd worried that revealing too much of my own struggles would diminish my value or burden those I aimed to serve. The reality proved exactly opposite—it was precisely in sharing limitation that the most authentic connections formed.
In fact, it was during this period that I found an investor for Armillaria - not just an investor, but the right investor - one with not only a view towards systemic change, but with empathy and compassion, and a genuine desire to make the world better. In fact, at no point was there any discussion of “market rates of return”. Just an expression of interest, an offer, an acceptance, and on we went.
Beyond "Vulnerable Populations
The very language of "vulnerable populations" reveals our sector's fundamental misunderstanding. Vulnerability isn't a characteristic of certain groups—it's the baseline human condition. We are all one accident, illness, or circumstance away from complete dependency.
When we frame communities as inherently vulnerable, we subtly position ourselves as somehow exempt from this universal truth. This creates distance where connection is needed most.
What if, instead of providing services to "vulnerable others," we acknowledged our shared vulnerability and built systems of mutual support that recognize this universal truth?
The Systemic Demand for Vulnerability
It's become increasingly clear to me that systemic impact—the kind that transforms underlying conditions rather than merely addressing symptoms—demands vulnerability.
Not the adoption of vulnerability as a leadership tactic, but the genuine acknowledgment of our shared human condition and the limitations of our knowledge and power.
When we maintain professional distance, we unwittingly reinforce the very systems we claim to be transforming. We create hierarchies of helper and helped, knower and known, capable and incapable—hierarchies that mirror the unjust power dynamics that created these challenges in the first place.
True systemic change begins when we abandon these pretences and engage as whole humans with other whole humans, each with our own gifts and limitations, insights and blind spots, power and vulnerability.
The most radical act in the impact sector isn't helping others from a position of strength, but acknowledging that there is no "them and us"—only us, with our beautiful, breakable bodies and our universal need for connection and care.
How might our work transform if we allow ourselves to be seen in our full humanity—not as a strategic choice, but as an acknowledgment of what has always been true?