That shitty Feeling is your Wake Up Call...

Feelings are the true markers of the soul. Yet most of us are so out of touch with them. Why? Because, quite frankly, they can suck. And who has time to feel them anyway?! I mean, could we be any more distracted?! We use our phones like crack pipe addicts, have ‘to do’ lists as long as our arms and then, of course, there’s our shameless mind cluttering media & mainstream.

I had a thought the other day and wondered what our society would look like if we were actually taught a ‘curriculum of the heart’. Like a 101 Course but for feelings and emotions and thoughts. What if we were told as children that our feelings mattered and that they have the very potential to create whatever life we want for ourselves? Imagine that? From what I have experienced, matters of the heart MUST be considered for our best lives to come forth. And as terrifying as they may feel, they are our biggest wake up calls to creation and to change. I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t taught anything about feelings as a child.

So I wonder this....

Imagine being part of a curriculum that explains the very nature of feelings. Imagine being taught that feelings are like the very breaths we take in that they are essential to us as humans. And imagine learning that each feeling has a purpose and that no feeling is ‘wrong’ but that it’s just a signal. Imagine learning that feelings are the language of the body and that just like learning a new language we can create new feelings. And imagine understanding their profound effects on the body, mind and spirit.

I have no doubt that my imprinted fascination with feelings, thoughts and the mind body connection is becasue I had an obese mother my whole life. I carried her “heavy emotional weight” from a little girl to adulthood and witnessed a woman who constantly put herself down, who hardly ever ate meals but instead snuck bags of candy into her room, a mother who would isolate herself socially becasue she was sad so much of the time, a mother who would frequently lose her temper because of the pain she was in, a mother who would make many promises that she never kept, a mother who preferred alone time than to bond with her only daughter….and so it goes.

She did the best she could and I love her for that. Tony Robbins says, "If you blame your parents for everything that is wrong with you, you better blame them for everything that is right too.” I love that. I believe I got exactly the kind of mother I needed for the lessons I needed to learn.

But I do often wonder what her life would have looked like if someone had taught her about feelings and how “not feeling” can lead to personal demise. I wonder what that would have looked like for her? Because I do know this, that whatever it is that we are NOT allowing ourselves to feel is showing up somewhere and we start to slowly die inside.