Crybaby

Anyone else find themselves weeping more and more?

If you caught our recent LIVE with Christine Morrison, you know she is the epitome of an open book. (And how lucky we are for it!)

She’s taken us back to her younger, more impressionable self, shared her most vulnerable work aloud at our NY meeting, and divulged the good, bad and ugly of birthing a new book while an audience waits with bated breath. This week, she’s back with a double-click into this idea of “creative vulnerability.” Christine’s not one to hold back tears—and she’s become awfully wise in understanding their role.

For anyone who’s ever felt like a blubbering crybaby—especially in adulthood—this one’s for you.

April 💋

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“Vulnerability is not weakness; it is our greatest measure of courage,” says Brené Brown.

I’ve always been someone who wears her heart on her sleeve, sometimes at the most inconvenient times. I’ve cried in spaces where people hide their emotions best: on stage, in front of a crowd, among new friends. It’s not because I’m careless or unprepared — no chance of that as a lifelong perfectionist — but often the emotion behind my words breaks through my composure.

In October, this happened in front of 52 members of THE BOARD as I read Younger Self, a Substack piece I had written for them. A tear slipped, then another. But instead of shutting down — which believe me, this generous audience gave me the chance to do — I gulped hard and kept reading.

I just let the tears flow.
Not because I was weak. But because I was brave.

In that moment, I understood something we don’t say out loud enough: vulnerability doesn’t diminish authority. It actually deepens it. The conversations afterward were incredible. They were fruitful and honest, engaging and full of connection.

Writing Without Armor

Authoring Clothes Minded: Fashionable Essays About Finding Yourself pushed me into uncharted depths of vulnerability long before its release last month. On the surface, it’s about fashion, memory and identity; underneath, it’s the story of who I’ve been, who I’ve strived to be and who I’ve discovered as my authentic self. I didn’t hold back in sharing insecurities, failures and flaws. I often say this collection is a roadmap for what can happen on the way to success — and what makes the book resonate is that none of us comes through life unscathed.

Growing up, fashion magazines and The Official Preppy Handbook taught me how clothes help you show up in the world. My decades in advertising and later in an executive role at Calvin Klein taught me the power of image — how it seduces, conceals and shapes perception.

But Clothes Minded wasn’t about projecting an image, it’s about revealing who I am. So many chapters demanded that I show up with memories I’d outgrown — or tried to outrun. An author (who goes by the pseudonym AY) once said, “We are writers, my love. We don’t cry, we bleed on paper.” Well, I do both. And I definitely soaked the screen as I wrote this essay collection.

My editor was thrilled. “Ink and tears. They are brilliant together,” she’d exclaim.

A Crying Shame

Around the time I was knee-deep in edits, a claim was circulating online: A Harvard neurologist said women who cry make the best leaders.

It’s a great headline, despite being completely unverified. But what has been proven is that emotional intelligence — not stoicism — drives effective leadership. Emotionally attuned leaders build trust and strong teams, navigate conflict more successfully, foster collaboration and creativity, and inspire psychological safety.

Even more than a decade after Brené Brown’s 2010 TED Talk on vulnerability, we are still learning to embrace it fully — as a strength, not a liability. I take enormous pride that we, as women, often excel in emotions. But not because we cry…because we connect. The tears are not the leadership; it’s in the awareness behind them.

Where Vulnerability Works

Becoming part of THE BOARD years ago has reinforced everything developing my fashion essay collection has been teaching me since crafting the first essay in 1998. I should be leaning into vulnerability. Vulnerability is power.

As a collective, we at THE BOARD don’t put up our armor with clients or each other. We show up fully. And yes, sometimes a tear is shed. We build community by being honest and digging deep for clarity and empathy. We bring lived experience — some positive, other times through hardship — to business challenges, and offer strategy rooted in humanity.

I have never felt more confident about the importance of leading from intuition, heart and depth. This is what leadership looks like now. It’s real. And sometimes it’s messy.

Sartorial Superpowers

Clothes Minded traces the meaning behind, and the humor in, what I wore as I navigated love, loss, marriage, motherhood, career shifts and the long, complicated process of becoming myself. It explores how clothing helps us show up in the world — and, when we feel our most vulnerable, how it helps us survive it. How it lets us experiment with identity. How it reflects what we can’t put into words. The book is funny, sharp and nostalgic but beneath it all — it’s vulnerable. For the first time, I stopped writing around my feelings and wrote through them.

As Brené Brown has taught us, courage — by its truest definition — is telling your story with your whole heart. Anything worth doing requires courage, and courage cannot exist without vulnerability. We owe it to ourselves not to shy away from it, because vulnerability is not the risk — it’s the reward.

As Brown has impressed upon us: “Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy and creativity.”

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