Comforting Voices And The Things We Do For Love
There is a little girl in my life, an Angel, and at four she feels much.
I remember being small and having bigger than life feelings.
It was scary not knowing what to do with them,
not understanding them and
not having a safe space to simply feel them.
To learn from them.
Instead, I ended up terrified by my own emotions
and learned to turn the dial on them way, way, way
down.
Yet, now in watching my little Angel navigate her feelings,
be allowed to feel anything, in any moment,
in not labeling it right or wrong
I am learning so much.
And she, she’s learning how to be herself—
comfortable in her own skin,
in her own feels
at age four.
Not forty.
How magical is that?
During 2021, I wrote a book. (cough)
What will become four books.
Yep, prolific as all those stuffed feels had to go somewhere
and the pages of journals and diaries was my stomping ground for years.
Until all those words, powered by unchecked emotions, became books.
And speaking of books, this is a piece, an essay, that landed on the cutting room floor.
It won’t be in my new book, Create Your Most Delicious Life, but the message it holds will lead you to just that.
Living a most delicious life.
comforting voices
Shhhh. Don’t cry. It’s okay. It’s not so bad.
Imagine hearing those same lines in a mother’s or father’s comforting tone.
And I call bullshit,
lovingly . . .
How uncomfortable is it to allow someone to cry their heart out?
To just be present in someone’s discomfort?
Especially a child.
It used to make my skin crawl. I’d run in to save the day with a box of tissues and a smile, a joke, anything to get them to stop sobbing.
Ah, did you catch that?
It wasn’t about comforting them but making myself feel better.
Getting my anxious skin to stop crawling, to not want to be sucked into their vortex of feelings simply because I didn’t yet know how to have solid boundaries for not my feelings to feel.
Instead, I was too sensitive.
Instead, I blamed being empathic.
Instead of owning that ick feeling of discomfort and allowing another to suffer and not making it mine—
a choice
I chose to be responsible for all.
I chose to take on all their feelings, often times ten, and exhaust myself carrying the weight of everyone’s pain.
When no one ever asked me to.
Nope, I chose to suffer and take on another’s suffering as those it was my own burden to bear.
As a child I developed the ability to stuff what I was feeling way down.
To judge it as wrong—mostly.
And quickly lost track
of what it was I was feeling,
what it was I was snuffing out.
It became easier to feel for another than to deal with my own knotted emotional baggage.
Instead, I packed that shit way,
locking it up tight.
I even went so far as to
bury it, all the feelings, in the backyard of me.
And tossed away the key—
until recently.
For me, when I hold my breath, I cannot cry.
I perfected that art as a child.
Becoming very proficient at holding my breath, often.
Stifling my ability to breathe deeply.
Perfecting shallow.
Because the other thing I learned
during my darker, more unhealthy teen years
is that when you hold your breath,
you kind of cease to exist
for just a beat.
Ponder that for a beat, if you dare, as I’d ask if you can relate.
If you apologize, minimize, hold your breath
so as not to take up too much space.
It all begins with learning how to not feel all of the feelings.
The dis-ease and disharmony created in the body that builds and builds until there must be a crescendo moment in time.
It begins with well-meaning, most often, parents.
They do what was done to them.
They repeat words uttered to them when they themselves felt too out loud.
I like to believe that it’s mostly misplaced,
well-intentioned sayings
shared without thought
of how they may do more harm
than good.
Shh.
It’s okay.
Calm down.
Instead of allowing one to scream it out.
Get it out.
Express yourself.
And not make it wrong to do so loud, dramatic, full out
because is that not how we find our way?
To discovering what it is we feel . . .
To not stuff it done,
Not shh it out
Not be told it’s okay when it feels oh-so not.
To instead be allowed to wallow in all that ugly cry,
snot-infested mess.
To be able to beat the hell out of a pillow
and not be judged.
To feel the full spectrum of all the delicious emotions
and to learn to name them, claim them, understand them.
What a gift, the freedom to be utterly, totally allowed to be self-expressive.
In fact, my Frenchman and I were just talking about this. . .
For him, this is good parenting. . .
to comfort,
to soothe,
to say shh, it’s okay.
For him, this is what it means to teach a child what it is to be safe.
To feel safe.
And it’s how he raised his two.
Yet, for me, I see that it can be a detriment.
For me, it was a detriment.
An, it’s not safe to cry, to express, to be me.
Interesting, is it not?
How varied two people can be?
For me, as a child, it was
a stuffing down of what bubbled to the surface,
often not put into words.
So often not understood. . .
Emotions so needing to erupt and spill forth with abandon, but instead became trapped, not safe to sink into naturally. Instead there is a damning up of all those unfelt feels for so many.
A lack of understanding them as they well up. . .
as they begin to bubble to the surface of you,
one day, some day
unchecked.
Yet, imagine if you, the adult,
allow another man, woman, child
the space,
the grace,
the place
to feel anything
and everything.
What would be possible if you embraced your own discomfort in the face of their outpouring . . .
As tears,
as a tantrum,
as we have no other
known-to-us, in that moment,
way to express, be. . .
as a child
as a too often shh-ed adult.
Just as a tide is not restrained
by the hug of the ocean . . .
The power of not tamping down the crashing wave
of an emotional outpour from another
man
woman
child
is a gift of empowerment
To feel,
to express,
to release
for them.
Even as it may make the hugger wildly, wind-tossed uncomfortable.
I say so be it.
For not feeling those feels in the moment means damming them up for a future moment in time
When they erupt with volcanic force.
Makes little sense.
Today, allow yourself to feel safe to be you,
to express what you feel,
to let it out,
however it comes
and learn to name those feels one by one.
That which we tamper down, dan up, we deal with another day.
Make today the day it’s okay to feel what you feel.
One Hour Does Have The Power To
Open Doors & Transform Your Life
Photo credit: Gabby Orcutt @monroefiles