Dear heart,
Do you find that you hide certain feelings because they just don’t seem appropriate to express when they arise?
One day I was in the food market and strolling the aisles when I had an impulse to cry. I had a particularly emotional roller coaster ride and a cracking open of my heart so huge and raw that I felt.. I can’t contain this. But I did anyway, as we do. I contained my feelings saying to myself, oh you can’t just burst into tears here in the shop and ‘make a scene’.
Later I cried, silently and when no one was around.
It struck me how much we don’t allow ourselves to just be with what’s happening because of some unspoken societal conditioning that says, no… you have to keep it all together. What will they think? Most likely that you’re crazy, weak, demented, or something.
The simple truth is we are human. AND… we have a multitude of feelings. There is no perfect human ideal to aspire to even though I think most of us continue to try whether we realise we are doing this or not. We are as we are right here, right now. We are ever changing each and every moment. We are not the solid thing we think we are. And there is no feeling of shame, or guilt or anything else to be hidden away in our wonderful messy humanness of being.
It’s taken years for me to unravel and I’m still unravelling the tightly bound conditions of how I’ve been taught to think and feel around being acceptable. The question really is: Who is the one accepting?
There is no OTHER. Other is only projections of our own inner world that we see ‘out there’ to help us find our way back to accepting, loving, being ourselves.
Liz Gilbert, writer, once expressed that grief and LOVE are very much the same feeling because in both instances, the heart cracks wide open.
I agree. The cracking open of the heart in sadness or in love can feel similar if not exactly alike. I’ve experienced this. In the deepest sadness and grief I have felt so so so much love in my being that I felt I could hardly contain it and I cried spontaneously. Not from sadness but through feeling the sensation within my heart and feeling overwhelming love that flowed out through tears. It’s all love I would repeat to myself. And it is. It truly is.
And it’s here in this rawness and aliveness of feeling greatly that creativity thrives and expresses itself as most authentic and really real.
Make room in your heart for all the feelings
Today I’m making room for ALL of my feelings and celebrating being human. In fact, this will be my daily intention. Will you join me? I would love you to.
with all the love in my heart to you,
