When you feel all the feels

January 2016

I just had a really rough day yesterday, and quite frankly, a difficult last week. You guys know the bathroom floor cry, right? I cried so many tears my eyeballs were sore and red and I felt exhausted, like a child after they've had such an intense tantrum that they pass out. Not to be dramatic, or anything. 

Yesterday I shared about it on my Instagram and Facebook. And I did so because I want to let people know that it's okay to have tough days/feel feelings/admit that everything's not going swimmingly. 

It's okay to be sad. It's okay to be angry. It's okay to be hurt & cry. It's okay to feel all the feels. The only emotion I believe serves no real purpose is shame.

I seek to be authentic, which means I want to share what's true for me no matter what it makes me look like. There's a ton of superficial sharing that tends to go on across social media, and in life, and I don't want to participate in that kind of double-living so I aim to be true & transparent. 

In the holistic coaching world, there can be some spiritual elitism wherein if we're not positive and happy all the time, something is wrong. Like maybe it's a sign of being dis-enlightened to experience anger or sadness. Some people have instructed me to always appear expert (aka- controlled, reserved, and definitely not emotional) and not to reveal much personal stuff if I want to seem credible and get clients. But I can't do that. I am an expert of sorts; I'm also a human and life happens to me. How can I sit with my clients if I don't sit in my own fire and explore and allow the emotions that rise up? 

All the zenmasters I follow allow themselves to feel ALL their feels: Pema Chödrön, Ram Dass, Wayne Dyer, SARK, etc. And they don't label them as "good" feels or "bad" feels--they just know it's all a part of living. Because it's not BAD to feel sad or mad. It's life. And life is brutiful (brutal & beautiful), as Momastery says. 

Rough days are supposed to happen, no matter how much of "the work" we've done and no matter who you are. I don't want to only share when I'm past "the struggle" or when I can appear more put together or during my happiest moments. I want to share in the middle of the "mess." I want to share the wide range of days we have as humans--we all have them. It's not bad or wrong to experience sadness or grief or panic. It's human. It's inhumane to pretend I don't experience these things. In fact, resistance to the feelings I don't want to feel intensifies them x 10.

Feeling IS the healing. 

The intensity of it can scare me, and it was one of the reasons I needed substance to escape. But I've earned the privilege to feel it all now. I don't get to pick and choose which feelings I want at all times.

And I know without these rougher times, the sweeter times would have no meaning whatsoever. Yesterday was particularly hard, and yet, it was still good. Like Rilke says, "Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final."

I don't have to fix it, I just have to feel it. That's all you have to do too.