I have been feeling an intense emotion of sadness and grief lately. I am an emotional person; however, this feels different. I ask myself the question, “What is happening inside me…what is this for?
I breathe. I pray. I meditate. I journal. I practice gratitude. I consciously release what isn’t mine to carry. Yet I still find there is sadness here.
This makes me wonder if perhaps this isn’t something that needs to be released right now. Maybe it is something in me that is asking to be felt.
Maybe my capacity to feel is showing up before I can understand what the feeling means.
I have spent years surviving, functioning, achieving, taking care of things, pushing through, or simply existing. There are enormous amounts of emotion underneath the surface.
I have become more aware. I have softened. I am more present and connected to myself, yet my emotional world has become louder. Not because something has gone wrong, but because something previously held at a distance is now close enough to be felt.
It feels like I am experiencing something like grief without a single identifiable object to direct the emotion to. Maybe it is grief that I have kept inside and is now emerging.
Grief for people who suffer.
Grief for the state of the world.
Grief for children that are being abused.
Grief for women who have been silenced or manipulated.
Grief for things I have personally experienced in my life.
Grief for versions of myself that didn’t get what they needed.
Grief for time passing.
Grief for things I cannot change.
Grief can simply be the price of having an open heart. And there may be another layer…
I have been doing a lot of inner work and questioning what is authentic to me- what feels alive, what my purpose is, what I want to create, how I want to serve and what kind of life feels meaningful to me.
That kind of questioning can be profound but also destabilizing.
I am in a place between “The woman I have been” and “The woman I am becoming”.
The old identity doesn’t fit anymore, but the new one isn’t fully formed. And in this space, it feels surprisingly lonely.
Sometimes it feels like sadness and emptiness. Sometimes crying for no apparent reason. Sometimes a strange sense of “I don’t know where I belong anymore”.
I cognitively know that doesn’t necessarily mean I am lost. It may be that I am between identities, and transitions can be emotional.
“I feel so much”. Perhaps that is the heart of it. I don’t just seem to experience emotions intellectually; I experience them viscerally.
I see someone suffering and something inside me responds. I encounter injustice and my body responds. I see beauty and I respond. I create art and I respond. I contemplate spirituality, love, humanity, transformation and I respond.
Sensitivity isn’t inherently the problem. But there is a difference between compassion and carrying. And I think I’m already recognizing that when I say: I release what is not mine to carry. Maybe the next distinction isn’t “Is this mine?”. Perhaps it’s: “Can I witness this without becoming it?”
I can love someone who is hurting without entering their pain. I can care about the world without carrying the world’s suffering inside my body. I can have a tender heart without making myself responsible for everything my heart notices.
And when the emotions still come with intensity I can allow it to Just Be.
There may be something very healing about letting myself cry without needing to know what the tears are about. Perhaps tears are not a message that needs decoding.
Perhaps they are simply my body’s way of moving something through.
Maybe I don’t need to figure everything out all the time. Maybe I can simply let myself be the woman who sits here, breathes, cries when she needs to, watches the world, loves deeply, and doesn’t yet know what all of this is becoming.
Sometimes “I feel sad and I don’t know why” is a completely honest place to be.
And honesty and awareness are part of this wonderful healing journey I am on.
So, today I am allowing myself to feel. To feel it all even if I don’t understand. To trust that the feelings are here for a reason. To receive the gifts that my emotions can bring to me.
And to know that it all doesn’t need to be fixed or figured out all the time.
I can…Just Be.
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