Emotions.... feel.... express.... use.... grow

As I said in my last post - I am angry, sad, scared, anxious, frustrated.... and at the same time I feel a deep sense of connection and love and compassion and warmth.

Those are my emotions and they are what fuels the actions that I am engaging in and how I interact with people.  Being able to name and feel each of those is critical to being able to continue to move forward on the actions, advocacy, self-work, and to be able to be there to engage with and support my friends, loved ones and communities.  Over the past few years during much of my work in mindfulness and on my own self work, I have realized the importance of being able to identify the feelings and to sit with each of them - I don't need to change them, I need to be able to sit with them, feel them, identify them, and let them help me grow.  The full range of emotions helps me to be more aware, softer and able to be more compassionate with myself and others, to be more empathetic, and to be stronger overall.

“The only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes. ”― Pema Chodron

It is also my job to teach my daughters how to feel emotions without having identify any emotion as right or wrong, but recognizing the importance of being able to feel all of them and to use the information we get from the emotions to help us grow and to guide us to engage in action and to be able to empathize with others.  I don't want them to shy away from uncomfortable feelings or to think they are something to hide.  It is not their job to make others more comfortable by hiding their emotions - it is their job to learn to feel and experience them and to use the feelings to move forward.  It means sitting with them with their emotions and helping them learn to name them, feel them, learn from them and move forward.

“…feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away. They’re like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck. This very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it’s with us wherever we are.”― Pema Chödrön

Emotions are intense.... and there are many of them that are being felt and expressed right now by everyone in the midst of the battle for racial and social justice.... all of them valid and important and in need of being expressed.  Almost everyone I know is feeling very intense emotions right now - and how they express those emotions is very very different.  One thing that struck me recently on a walking meditation, was how in nature - it is the confluence of all the different manifestations of things that brings about the greatest and most lasting change.  It is not just the single rainstorm - it's the violent storms and floods, combined with the periods of long dry spells, combined with long slow rains we experience.... It's the ebb and flow and rise and fall of the rivers and streams that creates the canyons.... It's the gusts of wind and the periods of stillness..

Likewise, for us to achieve real change for our communities - it takes ALL of our voices in all our different manifestations of emotions to really create powerful, long lasting change.... There is a place for all the emotions in the process of bringing about the change.  There's space for the anger and the fear and the frustration - and it's ok for your anger/fear/frustration to look and feel differently than another persons - and it's ok for what is your greatest push to be different than your loved ones.... But we can work together to have our voices come together as a loud symphony rather than single instruments.

“Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”But I say unto you, they are inseparable.Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.”― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

My voice and action comes out in acts of love, support, caregiving, nurturing, advocacy and writing.... I have other friends who are people of action - they need to act on the anger and express the rage and frustration physically and in a very loud voice and express some really heavy strong anger.... I have others who are feeling caught in the crosshairs of anger, grief, frustration and anxiety about loved ones who are on 'the other side' (police/military/etc), who are trying to figure out how to balance both.... I have friends who are struggling to really learn and understand their privilege and how to use it (shit I'm think this is something all of us with privilege should continually be working on but that's me).... I have friends who are angry and frustrated and want to participate in protests but are also dealing with the very real concerns and fears of illness for themselves or family and the risk of exposure to illness.... And I could go on and on.... All of these voices are STRONG and REAL and IMPORTANT!!!  And I think that it is only by embracing and understanding all of them and letting us each express and embrace our way of feeling and expressing and using our emotions can we grow individually and together to create one amazing environment/community/period of change.... And maybe when we are comfortable facing our own emotions and channeling and learning from them, we can also learn some compassion for ourselves and each other and be able to harness all of the power of all of the differences to make a better world for our children....

“Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution.”― Kahlil Gibran