Feeling it all...

A third of the way through 2020...for most of us these last 3 months have been more difficult than we could ever have imagined. Quarantine and shut-down have meant financial struggles, dealing with the realities of technology or the lack there of in many places, being faced with the need to deal with relationship issues as we are locked in with those persons or tabling the dealing with in order to just get by.

Its striking how when faced with a challenge, I often think that moment is the worst thing, day, month, year that I have ever had to survive.  Maybe it has been up to that point. Maybe it just ranks in the top 25. The repeated phrase is "that was the worst". 

There are aspects of 2020 so far that have indeed been difficult. Currently, I am anxious about my own financial ability to weather this storm. I am also anxious about parenting and family life.

But, there are so many aspects of 2019 that were worse if I try to put this all into perspective.

2019 was a year in which I needed to feel it all. To be honest the feelings I needed to feel probably started washing over me beginning in the 2nd half of 2018. So many Saints who had brought light into my life died. My first baby (four-legged) died. I finished school (again). 

The problem was I was so busy I didn't let myself stop and feel all the feelings.

There were so many things filling my heart and soul and because I felt like everyone wanted me to feel joy, I didn't listen to my inner knowing that said I was greiving simultaneously. I stuffed the tears. I hid all my sorrow.

But, that response is nothing new. I generally do not do a good job of naming and claiming feelings. I have shaped myself to be stoic. I have been the one to be present for others while they feel. But, to quote the Energizer bunny, I just keep going and going. I have internalized a message that my needs/wants/feelings don't matter.  I don't stop long enough to name emotions and feel them and release them.

These quiet days safe at home have allowed me space to acknowledge how rarely, I feel for myself and my life circumstances. I struggle to even make a list of feeling words.

I am in a season of naming how I need to, we all need to, feel all the feels. Every single one of us needs to name and sit in and FEEL and release our feelings. I am starting by simply naming my own pattern of stuffing and denial. Perhaps the next phase along the journey will be learning feeling words that I can claim and use to name my feelings.

Slowly through creativity, I am letting some of this occur. It's a slow process. Especially since it is something new for me. But, maybe together, just knowing there are others out there struggling with this same thing, we will each get better knowing that we are not alone.

My friends...feel all your feels.

My thanks to Glennon Doyle who touches on feeling all the feels in her book "Untamed".