To hold space (poem)

There is a space in which we all surrender

in which we all drink in the unknown

drink in the fact that everything is unknown

we let ourselves drown in it

as the tears empty us –

dry us out so we may be filled

with something greater than the pain

greater than the ways in which

we thought things had to be.

There is a space in which we hold on too tightly

too caught up in our day-to-day –

we are crumpled paper

and must learn to unfold ourselves

one crinkle at a time

we must learn how to be unfolded

into a space in which we have no idea of the outcome –

let us bask in the unknown

let us breathe in faith

let us come through this trial

and tribulation not because we were strong

but because we are weak

and knew it

and owned it

and danced with our weakness

so we could love ourselves

no matter the outcome

Creating a space to feel everything

I think one of my biggest lessons coming from everything so far is just allowing myself the space to feel things. For so many years I was living with this internal belief that 1. I wasn’t supposed to feel and 2. my feelings didn’t matter.

I’ve mentioned before that I had been bullied in 7th grade, and during that whole ordeal I ended up flipping the switch on my emotions because crying in front of people meant that I got harassed even more. It was for survival, for safety, it was the best I could do at the time.

What came up this week was an even earlier memory. I was in kindergarten and we were at recess. I kept running over to my teacher to tell her when someone was being mean or made fun of me and she started calling me a tattletale and telling me that if someone wasn’t being physically hurt then I didn’t need to tell her about it. What I realized is that in that moment I internalized the idea that if my feelings were hurt it didn’t matter. Or even simpler, my feelings didn’t matter.

So, as the years went on and people would hurt me emotionally, and I didn’t tell anyone because I had this belief that it didn’t matter.

Can we just take a moment? I mean whoa.

Since I was four years old, I haven’t been giving myself the validation of my feelings. I haven’t been allowing myself to feel hurt because I had been taught that hurt feelings didn’t matter. I quite literally haven’t been giving myself the space to feel hurt for the last 29 years of my life.

As I am trying to navigate these changes, I feel like an infant. I don’t know how to feel my emotions, and I don’t know how to hold space for them either because I have been living a life of denying them.

What I’ve been witnessing is that all this feeling has brought back a lot of additions I thought I had taken care of: emotional eating and using social media as a distraction, to be specific. So, learning how to keep space for these emotions to exist is huge, because I don’t want to fall back into old addictive patterns. I don’t want to continue to try to numb myself from the pain and joy of life. I tried living that way… all it got me was depressed and suicidal.

I imagine this is a lot of people’s stories. I imagine that we all have some work to do on allowing ourselves to feel and hold space for those feelings without trying to fix them. It’s okay to feel hurt, sad, lonely, and unloved, just like it’s okay to feel loved, happy, joyful, and content.

We are alive and we are human, we live in the realm of these intense emotions because that’s just where we are right now. We were born to fully experience the breadth and depth of this life. As much as I want to live as Pollyanna, I know that one day my dad will die and that will make me very sad. The house I live in could burn down. I could end up with cancer. And all of that is okay. It’s just beautiful experience.

If you can, take a moment today and sit and breathe, and try to be a space for what you are feeling. Don’t try to figure out how to fix it or find out where it came from, just breathe and hold it. Ultimately, that’s all every emotion in our bodies wants – to be seen, felt, and experienced, not shoved into the corner in hopes that it will go away.

Fear, abandonment, hope, and a plan

The question I come back to a lot of days is why have I been living my life from this space of anxiety and fear? Why have I kept trying to play by all these rules that I knew in my heart weren’t working for me? The idea of going into a job and working 9-5 for the next thirty years just makes me shrink back in horror. The idea that my entire life is to pay bills and die makes me want to cry.

But I keep doing it. I keep going into work and putting in times so I can pay my bills and my family can not worry about me because I’m always doing exactly what’s expected.

At the same time, it’s killing my soul. I don’t feel like I am really living in any way that gives my life value – either to myself or to others. I am not honoring who I am, and I’m not honoring the person I could be. But I keep playing out this pattern because I’m afraid. I’m afraid to be abandoned by my friends and family. I’m afraid to be misunderstood or disliked. I’m so afraid of these things that have been living half alive.

As I have been working more and more on myself, I’ve seen this happen. My family isn’t sure how to relate to me anymore. My mom has basically stopped talking to me altogether. They don’t get why I meditate and why it’s so important. They don’t get why I keep doing these spontaneous things. They see me changing, but don’t talk to me about it. They don’t ask what is going on even as I’m standing in the room.

Traversing this space is so confusing for me. I see that I could be happier if I moved out and really started living from the space of who I am, but I’m also trying to be happy where I am now, and I can’t seem to find that. As a more awake being, I understand that happiness comes from within, but I’m still finding it so hard to be happy.

I am at the point right now where I can’t decide if the Universe is giving me a lesson to see if I can still be happy no matter what, or if it’s making me uncomfortable so that I leave and find a new space in which to grow into.

I’ll be honest, the second one feels more right than the first. Feels more like expansion. Feels more like the lesson I need. And maybe that’s the answer.

I’ll tell you all what I want. This is my vision for the near future.

I’ve paid off my debt by the sheer grace and kindness of the Universe. I don’t know how, when, why, this money will come to me, but I trust that it will. I am open to all forms and ways that abundance is trying to come into my life.

Spring next year I leave my job and go on a six-month road trip across the country. I visit national parks and small towns. I see people and I help them. I’m making art. I’m writing. I’m detailing my experiences every day on here for you all. I’m meeting the friends that I’ve made from coast to coast. It’s beautiful, I’m aligned, I’m fully supported, and I find my path in the world.

It’s extreme. I know. You don’t need to tell me that. But I’ve been living from the other extreme. I’ve been living from the ego part of me that just wanted to follow the rules that society had in place that were leading me to a slow agonizing death or sudden suicide.

I have to believe and live from a space that life can be more than day-to-day mimsy. I have to believe that life can be lived in joy and laugher. I have to believe that life is more than mimsy.