There are times in our lives when we feel we have done everything we can to protect ourselves from hurt and pain.

We followed all the steps

We said the right things.

We were cautious.

We were vigilant.

And then the hurt and pain arrive anyway.

What can you do?

Denying our emotional life does not give us the results we hope for. We can either be with it, acknowledge it and feel it, or we can rush to pretend it isn’t there.

I am definitely a proponent of ‘get it all out’.

Do not shop it away. Drink it away. Sex it away. Busy it away. Because after all of that external masking, your internal is still in pain and is still hurt.

We are quick to jump at solutions, thinking this is the best response, but when ignored, the little disappointments, the little sadnesses build up over time and become bitterness and disconnection.  We begin to feel the heaviness of all those unexpressed emotions and the shine of life can begin to fade.

One day my husband, Emrys, came home from work as I had called him in an emotional state. This happened often when I was pregnant. I was carrying my first child and all of the memories (or lack thereof) of my own childhood began to haunt me.

It is hard for me to describe the level of emotional pain I experienced at that time. I had so many unanswered questions about my childhood and no one to fill in the pieces for me.

When Emrys arrived home, he picked me up from the floor and carried me to the bathroom to have a shower. It was in the shower that I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. I couldn’t stop. 

And then I did.

And then I was done.

I had felt the pain. The sadness of my childhood. The things I had survived. 

By the time I was dressed, I was in a better state of mind.

I had let a lot go.

Emrys looked at me, wondering what had happened. How could I go from such despair to clarity in such a short period of time?

I said to him that I would always be someone who feels deeply. It is not always pretty and it might be difficult for him to watch, but then it is out. Then I am done. 

Allowing ourselves to feel, and to acknowledge the feelings we have, creates space for clarity, to find a solution, to make the next move.

My next move was to contact my foster parents who were still living and to ask them to send me pictures of me as a child, and they did.

Something I have always told my children is not to fear their emotional life and to practice the ability to be with the emotional life of others.

Both Emrys and I openly cry in front of our children; we want them to be able to see emotion as a part of being a ‘well-being’.

Sometimes it is assumed that my role as a coach is to always drive action, but sometimes my role is to hold space for my client to feel.

We need to feel. It is a part of our humanity.

Wishing you a weekend of letting go. xxx