Read on Twitter
Radical honesty is a love practice. It reduces suffering, invites us to live on the awareness continuum, liberates us from reactivity & allows conflict to be generative & deepens our relationships. Dishonesty with others so often begins with dishonesty with ourselves.
Habitual dishonesty with ourselves can signal a lack of rootedness or self-knowledge beyond our [unresolved] trauma or reveal a deep dissatisfaction with the life we’re actually living vs. the visions of who we’d like to be that we project onto others.
Breya commented beautifully on emotional courage a few days ago. I’ve been thinking about the relationship between emotional courage & radical honesty. They’re interdependent. One might argue the former is a prerequisite for the latter.
But my God may there only be people in my life (& yours) who are willing to feel, see, be seen & have the competence to articulate (in word & deed, spirit & in truth) who they are & are not with their whole hearts. May our boundaries be bridges not borders.
Imagine what kind of connections we could cultivate & sustain if we were more radically honest with ourselves. What if more of us admitted to the deep dissatisfaction in our lives & a desire for a different kind of freedom? A fear of vulnerability? A pattern of self-sabotage?
What if not knowing how to shift something or operate in the newness of another life didn’t yield shame but opportunity & a real commitment to practice? Practice makes practice.
Radical honesty invites critical affirmation. Radical honesty is not rude or defensive or ego-based because it is an effort to reduce (everyone’s) suffering not perpetuate harm. I think that’s so beautiful.
In chap. 2 of bell hooks’ Sisters of the Yam, she talks about how many Blk folks confront issues of openness & honesty, citing that many of us use “telling it like it is” (“the truth”) as a weapon to wound others”, to “assault someone else’s psyche.”
She noted that this is not the kind of honesty that is healing but is a way to avoid punishment, accountability or to reassert authority (not boundaries). She argues that “critical affirmation emerges only when we are willing to risk constructive confrontation and challenge.”
& that brings us back to emotional courage. It takes emotional maturity & emotional courage to choose to show up. Being able to regulate our nervous systems & note our unresolved trauma allows us to know that constructive confrontation is safe & necessary for real intimacy.
All connections are ceremony (to me). I’m big on practicing openings & closings & transformative justice practices in my everyday life with all of my connections. I hope for more emotional courageousness & maturity, more radical honesty & showing up for us all. 
