Yesterday I attended a celebration of life for a dear friend. I’d already cried many tears over her death – and I knew there was more grief inside.
But I wasn’t able to touch and cry out this grief until I was at her gathering with all her friends and loved ones. There, in a whoosh, the tears came.
After weeping I feel more settled – feeling my sorrow, sharing stories about my friend, and connecting with others brought me strength.
Our emotions and our bodies have so much wisdom. Sometimes our bodies hold onto our emotions until there’s the space, connection and invitation where they can flow.
Sometimes we know the grief or anger is there, but it’s only later that the emotion can move, and can move us.
Emotional health means having a relationship with all our emotions. This includes challenging emotions like grief, sadness, or frustration.
We all have our own unique relationship and experiences with emotion – some emotions may have frightened us and so we avoid them. Some may have frightened our families and so were avoided. Some emotions may be seen as ‘bad’ and so we’re just getting to know and feel them.
We start, with exquisite kindness, where we are.
It can help to remember that feeling is what makes us human.
We want to feel, and we want to be moved: we want to feel the hunger that prompts us to eat, the alarm that moves us to pause or stop, the futility that moves us to let go, the frustration that moves us to effect change, and the attachment hunger that moves us to connect.
Some of these feelings are painful to feel. But they are here to ‘take good care of us,’ as my beloved teacher Gordon Neufeld says. I felt this care yesterday at my friend’s gathering: my sadness was a friend, a catalyst, helping me cope with the death of someone dear to me, moving me across the shores of grief.
This perspective – that our emotions are here to take care of us – has given me a more helpful and healing way of looking at emotions. I don’t have to be so afraid when I feel afraid, or when I feel sad, or when I feel frustrated.
Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron reminds us that ‘suffering is a part of life…. we don’t have to feel it’s happening because we personally made the wrong move.’ We will all feel sadness, grief, sorrow, or pain.
These two perspectives – that our emotions are here to take care of us, and that suffering isn’t a personal problem – can nurture our courage to feel more, not less.
We don’t want to judge ourselves if facing and feeling our emotions is difficult for us. And here’s the good news – we have our whole lives to practice. We have our whole lives to nurture a relationship with our emotions. We have our whole lives to learn how our emotions are here to take care of us.
These coming weeks of holidays and gatherings, of end of the year rituals and darkness (for our friends in the North), can bring up so many emotions. I wish you warm arms to collect every tear, compassion for the places in you that may still be learning that it’s safe to feel, and lots and lots of ’emotional playgrounds’ that help your emotions move.
For me, walking with my dog under the sun or moon (night walks are a wonderful way to shed some tears), a walk and talk with a friend, a hot bath with bath salts, a good sweat, making soup, hand crafts, a movie that will help me laugh or cry (or both!), and writing and reading poetry are all playgrounds that help me feel and move my emotions.
This helps me from avoiding, suppressing, or eating them! And when I do eat them, or numb out with social media, there is the balm of forgiveness and compassion. I’ll close this letter with one of my favorite poems, one that might be a good friend to you this week.
Compassion by Miller Williams
Have compassion for everyone you meet,
even if they don’t want it. What seems conceit,
bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign
of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen.
You do not know what wars are going on
down there where the spirit meets the bone.
Image credit: Let Grief Carry You to Another Shore by Eddy Sara, used with his kind permission.