#HealthTip of the week: Feel It All
As I think about the Health Tip of the week, I can’t help but think of a children’s book with the repeating phrase…
“You can’t go over it. You can’t go under it. You’ve got to go through it.”
Happy, sad, angry, resentful, embarrassed…whatever the emotion or feeling may be, it has to be felt. There is no way around it.
I used to be one to brush the feelings aside or pretend like nothing was wrong (okay, maybe I am still guilty of it at times), but the more I push it down, the more it squeezes out into other areas of my life. Ignoring and/or pretending like these feelings don’t exist, do not make them disappear. Push it down and it can show up as something far uglier and far worse — illness, destroyed relationships, mental anguish, and on and on it goes.
It is important to me that you know these health tips I share are created out of my own experience and are even things I am currently dealing with in my own life. Yes, I am human, and no, I do not have everything figured out. What I do know is these timely health tips can put you on the path to a healthier and more meaningful life.
Feel It All…
It’s timely, because I am in the midst of it.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
June 19th was my sister, Stacy’s birthday, and it’s the 11th time I’ve had to celebrate her birthday without her. Eleven birthday’s have passed. Time doesn’t make it easier, it only makes it different.
Even the happiest of celebrations are bittersweet because she is not here to share them.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
I say often that happiness is a choice, as is suffering. I recognize when I’ve stayed in the choice of suffering for too long and begin to move myself out of it. However, there is a space in-between and it is an absolute must. It is incredibly uncomfortable, it hurts, and it rocks you to your core, but if you do not allow yourself to experience it, then you only perpetuate the suffering, as it festers beneath the surface until it can no longer be ignored.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
This space — it’s about feeling it all. You MUST feel it to move past it.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
I allow myself the space to feel the sadness, to feel the pain of missing her, to feel the heartbreak of not being able to hear her voice, feel her hug and tell her how much I love her. I feel it all. Not because I am making a choice to suffer. No, not at all. I feel it all because I am making a choice to honor my feelings and to allow them to be felt in all of their ugliness…and in that there is ultimate beauty.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
The pain is palpable, it’s immeasurable. I can’t describe it, yet I could write thousands of words about it. As I celebrate another birthday of hers without her, I make a conscious choice to feel into my feelings, to allow them to come in whatever form they may take — sadness, anger, pain — all of it. I am not choosing to suffer, I am choosing to feel it all.
Although I may be referencing grief here, realize that grief does not only relate to the death of a loved one. Grief has many forms. For the purpose of the health tip, I am referencing all feelings. All emotions need to be felt and expressed, regardless of their source.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
“You can’t go over it. You can’t go under it. You’ve got to go through it.”
