Permission To Heal
Feel it to Heal it
I spent my early 20’s and especially my teen years running. I ran from my parent’s divorce and how much it felt like a personal abandonment. I was convinced that there was something wrong with me, and that was why my dad left. I felt unworthy and ugly and had some very dark nights alone. I spent the next ten years running from this unworthiness, convinced that if I used my body as a shield from what I was really feeling, then I could be strong and popular and fun. I hyper-focused on my body and was determined to be perfect. It was perfection that drove me away from what I was really feeling underneath. And I was determined to show the outside world that I was perfect in every way.
I spent the next 20 years healing, feeling, and expressing my emotions. My body decided it would no longer cover up my pain and unworthiness. I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, and a thyroid condition, along with digestive and adrenal issues. My body was crying out to heal and to feel.
Often in midlife, we hit a point where we can no longer live the way we are living: not feeling and living from our heads, not dealing with our stress, and maybe feeling an overwhelming sense of loss, whether through a loved one’s death, divorce, loss of identity, and even loss of our lives before COVID. These unresolved emotions get trapped in our bodies where they build and fester, draining our energy, leading to burnout, emotional imbalance, and more. When we chronically repress emotions, we create toxicity in our body, mind, and heart. We aren’t living to our full potential. At some point, our unexpressed loss and unexpressed emotions spill over to our bodies, and our bodies begin to speak our pain through aches, pain, and even illness.
What if, just by feeling, we accessed the real you, the essence of ourselves, touched our own hearts, told the truth about who we really are, and watched as numbing, feeling separate, bereft, busy, stressed, alone, distanced, and disconnected all fell away?
By truly feeling our emotions, we can see that we are a part of everything inside of us. There is no compartmentalizing and storing. We are our rage and we are our love. All of it is acceptable and when we truly feel it, it can all become a gateway to living life fully, to live with an open heart. It can be a full-body, mind and spirit presence. It can be true freedom.
It’s time to Feel.
It’s time to befriend our emotions, our bodies and befriend what hurts.
So often we sweep what hurts us under the rug and allow them to hide in the body (traumas, old hurts and wounds, illnesses, stress, anxiety, depression ). But midlife is wrought full of T’s: transitions, traumas, trials and even tragedies. At some point, life calls us to feel in order to heal from these T’s and the wounds they bring up from our earlier years and experiences.
Your body is the gateway to the soul. When the body feels aches, pains and illnesses, there is an energy underneath it that is calling us to feel in order to heal. Often healing doesn’t mean curing, but it does mean finding the love, the forgiveness and the light within the body and spirit so we can live in true freedom. This true freedom is the awareness of our souls: that pure love and light that is untouched by the human condition.
When emotions arise, I invite you to bring all of your awareness to an area in the body that is protecting and holding that emotion.
Bring it all with a deep breath.
Flood these emotions and your body with acceptance and love. Allowing it all and accepting it all. Let it know the emotion is allowed to be here. Close your eyes and breathe in and accept it all.
Give yourself permission to feel and heal and find this beautiful freedom on the other side of your tears, rage, and fears. This is your soul’s calling.