I sometimes notice myself pushing away hard feelings because I’m afraid of losing the happy ones.

This usually happens when I’m feeling good.

In the moments of hope + possibility after I’ve worked through a hard thing,

In the expansiveness that follows a creative breakthrough,

In the grounded presence of feeling connected to myself + the world,

And I notice the beginnings of some unpleasant feeling starting to creep in.

A wave of sadness, a flash of shame, a rumbling of anxiety.

And I shut the door + run back toward whatever good feeling I’m terrified of losing.

Because I’m forgetting that feelings can co-exist.

And even deeper than that,

that feeling the delight + joy + contentment,

and feeling the fear, grief, and rage --

*are the same thing.*

Both are a process of allowing aliveness, feeling what’s real, and welcoming truth.

And when I push the hard emotions away, I’m siloing off bits of that aliveness and creating a polarized, all-or-nothing experience of life.

I’m deciding that there’s no room for rage alongside my joy, no room for delight alongside my grief, no room for anxiety alongside my hope.

Which means, in essence, there’s no room to be a fully alive, dynamic, and complex human.

There’s no room for a rich + layered emotional landscape.

There’s no room for the wild currents of aliveness that give me so much in terms of vitality, power, and creativity.

So I’m trying to create that space.

To feel it all,

Explore what that opens,

And embrace the magic + power + weirdness of whatever I find.