Talking about feelings is one thing. Feeling them is another.
I’ve been sitting in some tough places and reflecting on what it means to actually experience the messiness of life.
It’s one thing to talk about feelings, to learn skills for managing and navigating feelings, and it’s another entirely to actually be in the thick of them – struggling not to capsize from the grief, the heartbreak, the sorrow, the anxiety, the rage, the Big Feels when they swallow you up and threaten never to spit you back out.
Of course, intellectually we may know that emotions pass. They move and swell and shrink and become something else. But, in the moment? When those emotions seem to be bigger than your entire being? It can feel as if nothing will ever be true except this pain, this fear, this all-consuming moment.
And it makes sense.
Most of us didn’t grow up in a world where we had it modeled for us how to safely sit in our scary places, to know we would be loved no matter how much it hurt or how big it got. Most of us didn’t have adults in our lives who knew how to have vulnerable, awkward conversations that we had a chance to witness, over and over again until it felt real and possible for us.
Which leaves us all, personally and culturally, treading water; hoping that we’re moving in the right direction. It can be even more difficult when you finally start finding words for your feelings and developing skills for resilience but the people in your life aren’t on that same path.
Life is messy, hard, and unpredictable for each and every one of us. We can hide from it and all the ways we feel about it, but that only works so much.
Instead, hopefully, maybe, on the good days, on the days when we have a little more patience or our tanks are a little more full, we can offer ourselves kindness and we can reach out towards those we love.
What powerful things: kindness and connection.
Powerful because they offer so much, but also because it takes such raw vulnerability to sit in them. I believe, with all of my being, that this is also where the beauty and transcendence of the human experience begins to emerge. This is where we find love.
That’s why self-reflection and naming where we are most stuck can be so transformative. Instead of ignoring and denying our truth, we can set tidal waves of change into motion by simply allowing our truth to be seen.
Today, like most days, I do not have answers.
But what I do have is dreams of you and I making it, of all of us finding new ways to experience our feelings, of the world shifting slowly and surely as it makes space for each of our stories, exactly as we are.
So, I will leave you with a simple question as you contemplate where you are today. Feel free to post your response in the Facebook group or comment below. I’m here for you.