The last few years, I have been learning to feel my feelings. I hate writing that, because it sounds wussy. There must be some part of this magnificent work that I do, that I still don't think is worthy. But I know one billion percent it is worthy, it is everything. Sitting still and embracing what hurts the most, brings you to your core, and your core is God. (or with my fundamental baggage the words higher power is a score!) The people who may think this is wussy, won't be reading this anyway, so let me let that go. Feeling my feelings is the most difficult journey in my life to date. Whatever devastating occurs in one's life, how one thinks about it is how one will work through it and how one processes it. As a person, who repressed much, especially after postpartum depression, coming out of that is freakishly difficult. (Can you see how I think about it... {smile})
I don't repress anything anymore. I feel EVERY thing and some days it makes me want to run and hide or better yet, scream. And most days, it's the really ugly cry that is exhausting. It feels like the uncomfortableness will NEVER go away. Some days I'm pinging all over the place - the Presidential election doesn't help either. And some days, not at all and other days, the energy flows through within minutes. When I hear other people speak aloud of this concept, it rocks my world.
One of those speaking is Glennon Doyle Melton. I recently watched her on Super Soul Sunday. Her second book is "Love Warrior." I heard her story of bulimia by age ten, a mental hospital stay in high school, and her addictions. When a friend summarized her book in a sentence for me it really opened my eyes. She said Glennon was running from pain the entire time with her addictions. (This is not a new concept but I was ready to hear it in a different way) Not namby pamby feelings, but pain. Pain is something that people can wrap their heads around.
So, it's not feeling my feelings, it is feeling PAIN. It is the essence of living life. Life is incredibly difficult AND beautiful, all at the same time (Glennon calls it Brutiful. Brutal and Beautiful. Dang it, wish I would have coined that.) I've read so much about addictions and I see it everywhere now in compulsions both good and bad, in so many different ways. So much of our society runs from our feelings and that is running from pain. Glennon reports that she thought of herself as broken. She thought of herself as someone who could not handle pain. And so she had hid from it with addictions.
What caused her pain? In short, she said she is a sensitive human being: a deeply feeling person in a messy world. There are those of us who respond to energy differently. Oprah said she learned over the years of her talk show that families have children who are the sensitive ones: the child who absorbs the energy of the family, subconsciously, unconsciously differently from the rest of the family.
I am that one. It took a while for this aha to sink in. I thought other people felt things as deeply and as sensitively as I do. They don't. But there are plenty of people out there who do. I have to respect myself and this work because it is what is right for me. It is who I authentically am. Finding my authenticity is finding God beneath all those layers. It is finding the love and the light to take me through the difficult and the beautiful that life is composed of. And when you taste that expansiveness of love and light, you don't go back. Sitting through the pain, gets you to the light.
In my house, I have two young ladies. One just turned eleven and the other is about to turn fourteen. They are now both in middle school. Some of the most brutal years of high school. And we are feeling it. Really feeling it.
There was one week where both of them were having difficulty and there was much emotion in the house. I put my big girl mom panties on. I listened. I problem solved when necessary and kept my mouth closed when they wanted no advice. Their emotions and pain pinged me but I carried on. There were steps I needed to take, and I did. I wanted them to be heard. I want them to know they matter. I want to be their soft place to fall. (George does to, in his own manly, fatherly way) And after the turmoil of the week passed, I felt it. I had to have my own meltdown from listening and letting their pain pass through.
I am the sensitive one and that's okay. That is who I am. And I know the feelings won't kill me. I know at my core, there is love and light. And I know if I feel my own feelings as difficult as it is sometimes, I can show up for my loved ones who need to be heard.
This is my work. Feeling my feelings. It is not easy but one billion percent necessary.
Namaste.
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