Just, like, feel your feelings.

What, like it’s hard?

Your paid subscriptions are providing free and reduced fee counseling for those in need. Thank you for your continued support of this publication!

Have you ever slammed your closet door over and over until the trim started to peel away from the door jam? Have you ever thrown a plate across the room and watched in shatter? Have you cried on the floor of your shower? In your car? Behind your sunglasses while walking the dog? I have. I’m like the Dr. Seuss of crying these days. I will cry here. I will cry there. I will cry everywhere.¹

In his recent book The Life Impossible, Matt Haig writes,

“When things are wrong, we need to reach rock bottom in order for change to happen. We sometimes need to feel trapped in order to find the way out. We don’t meet ourselves in the light and air. We don’t understand the radio when the song is playing. We sometimes need to smash the thing to see how it’s made.”

Excavating our long buried beliefs and emotions is how we smash the thing to see how it’s made. What’s cool is, the thing is us and we get to decide what to keep and what to let go of. The bitch of it is that we have to sort through the mess first.

Spend five minutes on the internet and you’ll find a dozen internet therapists peaking through your screen to teach you how to process your emotions. “It’s sooo important” they say. “A little uncomfortable but sooo worth it, you know?” Uncomfortable, like the sensation in your lower back after a 15 hour road trip. Uncomfortable, like a hangnail. Uncomfortable like saying “you too!” when the server says “enjoy your meal!”

But for those of us who’ve ignored, buried, dismissed and otherwise avoided our emotions for years or decades of our lives, experiencing our emotions can feel terrifying and out of control, more like labor than a hangnail. More like a catastrophic injury than a sore back. No thanks. I think I’ll organize my closet instead and pack those emotions away in my sock drawer.

With physical labor, in birth or athletics or work, you know that it will end and you know what’s coming when it does: a baby, a medal, a project completed. With emotional and spiritual work, we’re moving toward a future so unfamiliar we’re not entirely sure it exists. There is no training montage, no growing belly, no time-lapsed before and after video.

But I want the montage², I want sore muscles, callouses on my palms, something that lets me know that the work is real and the results will be, too. I want to know what’s coming next. But, annoyingly, that’s not how life works. It mostly only makes sense in past tense.

“It’s so strange that we don’t want spoilers in our stories but we seek them out in our lives. We want to know we will fall in love…we want it all mapped out. We ant to know everything ends well. We want it all spoiled, with as little mystery as possible. But where is the fun in that?… Embrace the mystery would be my advice. Embrace the impossibility of it all. Enjoy the not knowing. Don’t rush to the wedding or the death or the amen.” - Matt Haig, The Life Impossible

Ugh, fine. So this is a reminder to trust the part of you that started down this path. You may not be able to see the finish line, but it’s coming and with every step forward you’re closer to wholeness, healing and integration. As you open your heart to the anger, grief, fear and sadness, you open your heart to joy, curiosity, delight, and love. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. I don’t know what’s coming next, but it’s going to make for a great story.

PROMPTS

I’m a big fan of writing letters to yourself. It can help us access that wiser, more grounded part of ourselves that can compassionately guide the parts that are freaking the heck out so much of the time.

1. Imagine your life five years from now. Write a letter to yourself right now. Fill it with encouragement and reminders of where you’re headed.

2. Make a list of 20 things you would do if they weren’t irresponsible/too expensive/too risky/ridiculous/embarrassing. So many of us learned around age twelve that it wasn’t cool to care or try and have been living by that ever since.

3. Write down at least three things you’ve overcome in your life. Three things you’ve come through one day at a time.

4. Make a playlist that makes you feel like you’re living in a training montage. On mine: Brain Stew by Green Day, Passion Fashion by Judah and The Lion, Hope by NF.

A DIGITAL CARE PACKAGE

1. And that’s a GOOD thing, so for the love of God don’t text me to ask if I’m ok.

2. This one, specifically.