feel your feelings

It’s quite a time, isn’t it?

I know for me it’s been a very volatile few days. I’ve been feeling a lot of things, often all at once, which can make it difficult to discern what’s actually going on in that heart, mind, and body of mine.

Today’s passage in my book of daily reflections was all about feeling one’s feelings. Which, as it turns out, is not the same as saying “I FEEL A LOT OF THINGS” and then busying oneself with one’s day. It requires actually slowing down, leaning in close, and lovingly listening to the whispers of the heart. There’s a deep knowing that lives in there, and while it can ache to hear it honestly and feel it fully, it is our way to freedom.

I am struck by the idea that it takes both sun and rain to cultivate a beautiful garden. And that the rain doesn’t necessarily deliver itself softly to the roots of the flowers, where they can easily drink it in. Far from it, sometimes it pelts brutally down for hours at a time, pooling up and threatening to drown. I wonder if the flowers ever think “I cannot take one more moment of being out in this rain, it is TOO MUCH” before it finally ends, and the sun comes out, and they have the water they need to keep growing, to repair, to bloom.

Whatever you may be feeling right now, it’s valid. I don’t know when this rainstorm will end. Or how there can such bright patches of sun, brief as they may be, in the midst of it all. It is a terrifying mystery. One I am trying to move with, moment by moment, as I sit tight and wait for the rainbow.

In the meantime, I made another printable colouring page for us.

Through the sun and rain,
Emma