The big emotions I’ve felt in the last two weeks have an ancient memory vibe to them. Like I’ve felt them in another life. And they got buried.
This blog comes with a vulnerability alert (especially to my daughter) because I need to gush all over the place in this one. She had a baby! And I went into some kind of embodied emotional place that surprised me. It took me back, way back.
Sometimes it takes an emotion to welcome an equally intense suppressed emotion.
I ended up spending a couple days in my room doing more inner work. (yes, I agree, will it ever end, this inner work?) The answer is found in your own openness to the deep within you, and how complex your trauma, and how sensitive you have been over the years to the life experiences that were tough, and how well you were or weren’t attuned to and co-regulated by loving relationships, when things got rough.
Some of us (most actually) have unopened emotions, wrapped up, unprocessed, unreconciled, and needing comfort, love, and relief. And it takes a trigger that allows the deep unto deep to surface.
This birth of something so precious, so beautiful, so vulnerable, so magical and inspiring, so eliciting joy with ridiculous levels of “in love-ness” feelings, triggered the fear of loss in me. It took me to my knees. I was ashamed and hid it, processing it on my own. Overwhelmed with my own over reaction to something so beautiful and perfect.
When I finally got to hold her, the magical fairy child, I recognized my need to hold my own little life at this age. What I felt was my own pre-verbal, infant-like, raw, unresolved grief of early life loss. Somehow (back then) I learned that love and joy are the most dangerous friends in all the world. You can’t trust them. They lure you in and rip your heart out.
So… I write about emotions in a time like this. Because emotions get stuck. They hide until there is capacity to feel them. And they ask for a remedy. They ask for time and touch and love and space to be held. They aren’t you. They aren’t me. They are the greatest gift and the most powerful potion to touch your life. They need to be seen, heard, felt, and comingled with compassion. They need skin to skin, to be known, to release the burning tears. They need to be soothed before they can retract like the end of a wave pulls back its water into the sea. Leaving the shore to rest, the sand to absorb and dry out.
In a perfect loving world, we return to homeostasis and find joy again after the painful experience subsides.
When this doesn’t happen? Well, we still need it to happen. Emotions will wait for the comfort, for the unique and specific human connection they need. They are very persistent. They let us know they are waiting. When we listen, we can welcome them with courage, even when they surprise us out of the blue with a super extreme sadness and fear with the birth of a grandchild.
When it's time to be overjoyed, we can crash into something other than joy. This is a sign that something inside is calling out for help, an emotion to be released so joy can return. Joy is where our brains, our nervous systems, our immunity, our souls, feel most at home.
It turns out that I needed to be held just like I held my granddaughter. Carefully, lovingly, calmly, not leaving, not with suppressed anger, not full of tension and fighting. I too needed a soft place to rest and be a magical fairy child in a safe and sturdy world that could hold me with all of my emotions; I needed twinkling eyes of love, a quiet calming voice, a human heart beating next to mine, arms of love to help me find the most natural way back to joy, after the waves of sadness and fear washed over me.
And so…this is what I gave myself this week. And I will continue to do so. I’ve cried my shadowy tears of old and returned to courageously embrace joy, knowing what this latest wave of emotion is about; and knowing what I needed then and now.
So, what are you hearing in this wee blog? Are you listening to your deep calling unto deep emotions? Do you need safe sturdy arms to hold you and lovingly catch your tears, and lead you back to joy-camp? Or are you already back to joy-camp appreciating this season of love, and able to lend a shoulder to a friend who is leaning in? This is me inviting you to tune in. Tune in to your inner world, to your body, to the Spirit, and to those around you. And attune.
Emotions are like waves. They crash on the shore of our lives, and return to the calm sea, leaving a beautiful expansive shore to run and play, laugh and sing, dance, and splash in all the waves that will come again. And again. And again. Thank goodness!
And thank goodness for this magical fairy child, my first granddaughter, Ayla Jane. I’m beyond in love.
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