One of the most toxic messages we've learned from the culture (speaking generally and collectively) is that we should feel good and happy 100% of the time and if we're not, something has gone terribly wrong.

I know I've fallen into this lie, and I know where it has led me: to spiritual bypassing, denial, fragmentation, and smallness.

I also know that feeling hard emotions is a powerful act of realness, self-love, and power.

Every time I do it, it reminds me I'm big enough and brave enough to do hard things and feel hard things, and this deepens my experience of life.

Of course, there are things I can do alleviate emotional suffering (mostly working through my thoughts and stories that create them), but this is always after I feel and allow what's present and real in the moment.

(And also: sometimes our emotions have no deep reason and just want to be felt so they can move on).

Embracing this both/and in my emotional life and landscape has led to so much goodness and richness because in the process, the good emotions have a deeper, vaster space to land and be absorbed in my system because there's more room for everything and everyone - the sadness and the joy, the frustration and the delight, the fear and the comfort.

And all of it together makes for a rich and deep life and a big and brave self.