The Doorway

🎙️ The Doorway: Why Vulnerability Is Where Healing Begins

Healing doesn't begin when we pretend everything is fine.

It begins the moment we're honest enough to admit we've been hurt.

In this deeply personal episode, Tombo Baldwin explores one of the hardest—and most freeing—steps in personal growth: becoming vulnerable. Many of us spend years protecting ourselves through control, avoidance, perfectionism, or emotional walls. Those survival strategies may have helped us make it through difficult seasons, but they often keep us from experiencing the healing we've been longing for.

Tombo explains that acknowledging your wounds isn't weakness—it's the doorway to restoration. Through practical encouragement and heartfelt affirmations, he shows how honesty, forgiveness, and speaking truth over your life begin replacing old patterns with authentic freedom.

You don't have to relive every painful moment.

You simply have to become willing to open the door.

Because on the other side of vulnerability...

...healing is waiting.

YUP. I GOT YOU.

🎙️ Listen to the full episode and explore more content, merch, and resources:

🔗 https://linktr.ee/tombobaldwin

Transcript

0:38

Okay, welcome to the podcast. I'm not a little heavy there and I have to confess today's podcast will be a little heavy, but it is a really important podcast. It's going to be heavy and I'm adjusting my camera here a little bit, but it is necessary and it is part of the healing process and it's part of what's going to help you live in this new reality. So let's get the intro music. So proud of you, all you who listen, you're doing the hard work, you're sharing the podcast. Thank you for those of you who are writing reviews, because I know you're writing them. I haven't seen them yet, but thank you for doing that. And if you do that and you just shoot me some fan mail here and you can connect my fan mail, I think on all the platforms that I've been on and give me your name, I'll give you a shout out here on the podcast and I will send you a bumper sticker. So hey, today's podcast and the intro is something that I thought about a lot. And I thought about it a lot in regards to myself. And I've actually thought a lot in regard to people who you know, and who I know that we would consider narcissists, like those people you just don't like being around them. And they're always manipulating, they're shifty and they're, you just, you get a yuck feeling being around them. And once you become aware of their tactics and what they do and how they just need so much attention and how they have to get it in manipulative and coercive ways and how they have to be in control. First, when you meet them, you're like, boy, this person has it together. But if you happen to marry one or you're related to one or have to live with one, you know what a disaster that is and the control and the intensity and the need for attention and the need for affirmation. Like you can't ever have a conversation where you like share something heartfelt and feel like they listen unless it's going to serve them in some manner, say, the narcissist really screwed up and so they've got to be empathetic for a season to get that control back. But they're always turning the conversation back to themselves. And truth be told, and this is the part that none of us really want to hear, we all deal with that to some degree. Okay, the truth of this podcast and the hard truth of today's episode is there is so much dysfunction in the world. None of us have escaped dysfunction. We all deal with the dysfunction. Our parents, our grandparents, our siblings have lived in this world and have dysfunction. And so this is the thing about the podcast. You're going to be like, Tom, why is this helpful? We'll get to that. But we want to talk about the problem. The problem is denial. We deny we've been hurt. We deny we've been taken advantage of. We deny that there's woundedness inside of us. We deny that there's sickness inside of us. We deny that we're hurt. We deny that we're aching. We deny that we're lonely. We deny that we're longing. The problem is nothing's wrong, but the symptoms say something's very wrong. And I brought up narcissists because a narcissist is really, it's not even fancy anymore. Once you see through it, and I've been there, I've done that, okay? And some of you have been there, done that. Some of you are still doing it. Some of you are part there and on the road to healing. But behind a narcissist is the hottest, ugliest, wounded mess that you can ever imagine. The story is a very hurt person, a person that's been wounded, that's been a victim. And the way to never be a victim again is to have absolute control over every situation and not ever to be vulnerable again. If you're not ever vulnerable or in a place of vulnerability, you can't get hurt, or so the illusion is. And so, and like I said before, I say this for myself, and I think I can say it to you, we all live in a degree of this because we live in a dysfunctional world. And as we're young, we don't know how to deal with this hurt. We don't know how to deal with the out of control things that come into our life. And so we develop these methods to survive. You're a survivor. You've made it this far. We can deal with the rest, right? The point is to realize that you've survived. What have you survived? Being taken advantage of, being used, being abused. And it comes in all kinds of degrees. And oftentimes we justify, oh, mine wasn't really that bad. Bullshit. Abuse is abuse. Words, neglect, coldness. It's all bad. And it all hurts. Stop justifying it. What I want to do in this episode for some of you is going to be incredibly hard. It's been hard for me to do it. I've had to do it over a lot of seasons and slowly because it puts us in a very tender spot is admit that you're a victim. You've been taken advantage of. You've been hurt. You can feel those hurts. Just acknowledge them for a second. We're not going to go and relive them all. No, we're not. I don't think that's the answer. I don't think the answer is going back. Just the fact that we acknowledge that we're hurt and there are things in us that need to be made right that are a little broken. Okay. One of my affirmations is that I'm not broken. That's because I'm being repaired. Sometimes we have to admit that there are things that are out of order and maybe out of order is the better thing. We're not broken. We still function. We're not broken. There's no out of order sign on us. Although some people are like, maybe there should be, but we've lived and we've developed some wounds. And as long as we deny them, there's no healing. So this episode is simple in premise because once we admit that we've had hurts, we've been wounded, we've been taken advantage of, the healing can come in. And that momentary acknowledgement, and it may be overwhelming because the way you have stored your hurt may not be any more than anybody else's, but the way you stored it and kept it, it can overwhelm you. And so open it as far as you can. I think just a little bit. It's just like say, Tom, let's do it right now. Tom, I agree with you. I've been hurt and there are wounds in there. I want healing. You did it. It doesn't have to be rocket science. Words are the tools to release and heal. You start the process, but you have to get to that place of vulnerability. And I've come to love that place. But the first time you visit it, it is flat shit scary. Okay. You're just like, I see that door coming up. Nope. Nope. Nope. Absolutely. Pass. Hard pass. Hard pass. Nope. We're not going to go there. Okay. Let's see. What are those traits that I have? Distraction. Yeah. Let's distract. Avoidance. Oh no. Avoidance. That works. Oh no. Just hard control. I ain't doing that. You can't make me do that. It's not fair. I admit it's a very scary place. Perception-wise, once you get there, you find that healing is there in abundance. So much healing, so much abundance. And so when you get to that place and you say, yes, I've been hurt in this way and this way. When I was young, my mom and dad neglected me. I didn't get the attention I needed. We didn't have the food in the house we needed. I learned to get things my own way, to manipulate, coerce, to get things. I didn't get love. So I found a way to get love and it's caused this hurt. That is where the healing process begins. That's where the healing process begins to start. There is, in this place of vulnerability, it is like this doorway to the room full of the healing balms. It is like going down a corridor and it's dark and it's scary, but you open that door and you're like, wow, so much healing. So much is available here. I can't believe all that's available here. So, the takeaway here is that you are loved, especially by me. And I know that there are people that love you and it's okay to be vulnerable. There's a safe space for you. And as you go there, you're going to find the healing. And so the challenge is, in the next couple of days, go there and open it up and be honest about the places and the ways that you've been hurt and just affirm that you are healing. You write those affirmations at those places that you've been hurt and maybe the dysfunction that you see coming out of it. You say things like, I no longer seek control. I seek authenticity. I am an authentic person. I am a person that's honest. I am honest about my emotions. I am honest about how I feel. I tell the truth all the time. I am genuine. I have a good heart. I can love without control. Amazing words as you go to that place and you realize where your hurts have come out of, because oftentimes there's nobody to blame. I mean, things happen and there are people that are involved, but we live in this world where there's lots of hurt and there's lots of dysfunction. And so we spend way too much time blaming and way too much time trying to point the finger at someone when we can go there, we can see the places of hurt and we can begin to heal those with the words. I choose to lay down bitterness. I choose to forgive. I let go of this past hurt. I release this person from judgment. Okay. That's a powerful one because you're like, they don't deserve it. But judgment on your part is like drinking Drano and watching the other person get sick. It doesn't happen. You get sick. Same with unforgiveness, same with bitterness, same with all those things. So this place of vulnerability, this place of surrender allows us to begin to address the root causes and we're not blaming anybody. We're just, we're going there and we're putting a healing balm and we're putting a new thing in its place. A thing that's like a chink of armor where it protects, but it also radiates light. It's like this armor that radiates and brings more light to the room. As you replace unforgiveness with forgiveness, it brings light into the room. So as you put that onto yourself, you're bringing more light into your world and into the world around you. There's beauty that's happening in this process where you're vulnerable. You go to that place. Believe me, I'm a big tough guy. I lived to waste all my life. This is not a natural place or it wasn't when I started. It's a very natural place now because the healing feels so good. And what I see coming out of me is amazing and how it's blessing others this place of vulnerability. So the challenge is to go there, begin to identify those things, speak the opposite, write them down in permanent marker, take the false things like we talked about in the last podcast, write them in chalk, erase them and watch them disappear from your mind. And this may not be a one and done thing. You may have to do that a lot of times. Sometimes things persist and that's okay. The challenge is to start. Start right after this podcast ends. You can already feel that stuff there. Yeah, I can feel it here. I know some of you are dealing with bitterness, unforgiveness, not feeling loved. So I just tell you, you can forgive, you can release bitterness and you are loved. I know there are other things. You can do this. Hey, I love you guys. This is, it's a short episode, but it is a bammer, right? A bammer in a good way because you're going to bam that dysfunction out of your life and into the wonderful life. So love you guys. I got you. I do. I got you. Bye.