Exploring the Power of Emotion: Navigating the Depths of Feeling Deeply and Intensely

It's so easy to be perceived as the one who has got it all together, always happy, super mum etc. but in reality, no one really knows what's going on for you or how you really feel in any given moment.

We meet people daily and say "hi, how are you?" and so often we either, don't actually want to know how they are or, if we are the ones answering, we say the same old automated response of "I'm good, how are you?"

Zooming back in time a couple of years, I had my first "A-ha" moment with this "how are you?" exchange.

I asked a beautiful wahine how she was, she said the standard "I'm good", but I could see in her eyes that wasn't her truth, so I asked "are you sure" to which she responded something along the lines of "No, but no one actually stops when they ask this question, they just say it in passing and they don't really care to hear the answer". I asked her if I could hug her and hold her, and the moment my arms wrapped around her, she broke down in tears.

I'm sharing this story because it was the beginning of another evolution for me. I chose in that moment to always share the truth of how I am feeling when people ask and to really listen when they share.

It still comes as a shock to people even those that know me well, when they ask how I am, and I respond with things like "Well today I'm actually having a really shit day and I feel irritable and grumpy" or a massive sigh followed with "I'm feeling really flat today".

Often it can be the beginning of a beautiful conversation that gives the other person the permission they need to really acknowledge how they are feeling too, but more than anything I want people to notice how they feel and then give themselves the permission to express it and feel heard.

Coming back to the present time and my reality.

The crumbling, the falling apart, the feeling so deeply I feel like there is something wrong with me, isolating myself so that I don't have to tell people how I really feel when they ask because the truth is, I don't even know how I feel. I am not super mum, I don't have my shit together all the time, I'm absolutely not always happy, I put on a brave face, and put everyone else first forgetting to honour myself or my boundaries, and sometimes, I am just not ok....

So I started my daily spiritual practises again, I breathe, I meditate, I do yoga, and I take time to sit with cacao daily and connect with her spirit, I reflect on, and explore who I am, I journal and allow myself to feel fully and deeply, I cry without having to know why, and I begin to understand more and more that there are always things beneath the surface ready to rise and be released, and I know now that I am ready and willing to handle this.

I am ready to love all parts of me.

Diving in and looking at the hard truths, I realised that when I am putting everyone else first and doing all the things, for all the people, all the time, I begin to build expectations, and while at the beginning I was doing all of it out of generosity, as time went on it became part of who I was and then it was no longer coming from the generousness of my heart. So resentment started to creep in. Resentment towards family, my children, my husband, my mother, my brother, my friends and then lastly, I realised I was resenting myself for allowing this to happen.

 I am ready to love all parts of me.

I try to reach out in the most subtle ways at first, and then slowly it becomes louder until eventually I feel like I'm screaming and the feeling of not being heard, that inner child wound from years and years ago begins to creep in, and it takes me back to that age where we were meant to be seen and not heard, where we should respect our parents but the respect isn't always mutual and triggers start going off all around, I am not worthy, I am not seen, I am not heard, I am not enough.

I am ready to love all parts of me.

Choosing to people please, constantly sacrificing myself, saying yes when I should've said no, being the pillar of strength for the people I love when they are falling apart, constantly feeling like it's my role to hold the family together, allowing other people's pain to affect me, giving my everything to friendships that don't give their everything back, forgetting myself, forgetting me, forgetting the beautiful soul that is right here, has always been here and is waiting to be nourished and loved.

I am ready to love all parts of me.

I've realised now that it is ok, to not be ok. It doesn't mean there is anything wrong with me or that I am broken. I am living this human experience and part of that means there will be pain, there will be sadness there will be times I feel hurt, or angry and that is all part of this human experience and it is absolutely ok to feel it, to feel all of it, in fact it wouldn't be a life worth living if I wasn't able to feel all of it.

It's not easy! But I know that I hold all of the wisdom of the entire universe in the portal of my heart, in every cell of my body and everything I am experiencing has been felt before, nothing is new here and I am not alone.

I'm choosing to live a heart centred life, to courageously feel all of it intensely and I have decided that I am ready to love all parts of me.