Today I walked my neighborhood “feeling my feels”, as my partner and I say, “without an object”, as Adam, one of my teachers and friends says. I’ve always wanted to be this brave.
I have big emotions. They have felt overwhelming, many times. But I have been on a life-long journey of learning to truly feel them, to let them be lived in and through me, instead of over-amping them or, alternatively, shoving them downward and away out of fear.
As an adolescent and today still, my spirit is buoyed by those brave enough to speak really big truth. My big truth, for today, is that sobbing feels not only better but vital and “right” when done out amongst the trees, which sometimes, given time constraints and city life, means–gasp!–sobbing in public-ish.
Frankly, I feel like it is incredibly sane to let a little grief, anger, vitality, etc. out in public, with each other, in community.
I further believe that is is sometimes wisest, especially for those of us who have been through a lot of processing and have gotten a lot of time to share our stories, to feel our feelings “without an object”. I am freed by letting go of why I might be sobbing, just allowing the sobs to come.
Today, I found that not only did I not know if I was sobbing because of x, y or z in my life, I didn’t even know whether I was sobbing because I was hurting or because others were. At the risk of being offered a number of lovely labels, I will offer that I have a strong sense that I was sobbing in part due to a deep joy that comes to feed me as I walk–both literally & metaphorically–more and more steadily in the truth of who I am and what I stand for.
I choose to let myself “feel my feels” and I have learned to be nourished by them–all of them. And today when my neighbor stopped to ask if I was ok and I said, “yes, I am just feeling”, she hugged me tight right there in the street and we were both nourished ten-fold.
I am sipping from the well of vitality that life brings–in grief, joy, even neutrality, if it’s really allowed to be felt. I think it’s important for us to share this with our neighbors.
