Letting grief catch up to us

At a major turning point in my life, I stopped running and I let grief catch up to me.  The first half of my life, I felt like I could "stay positive" and avoid pain and suffering by redirecting myself to a silver lining.  As I wrote in a previous post, "stuffing is for turkeys", when we suppress negative emotions, they can take up residence and express themselves unexpectedly.   These emotions that built up inside of me, came out as anger, fear, frustration and bitterness towards people or groups that I thought needed changing.  I was ashamed of these feelings and stuffed them too.  When I bottled negative feelings, I feared that if I started crying, I wouldn't be able to stop.  Now that I have more courage to face loss, disappointment, sadness and empathy for others in pain, I set aside some time to sit with these feelings and let them flow naturally.
Our culture promotes a relationship between happiness and success.  We also value busyness.  I think these two attributes lead us to run towards all things that we think will make us more successful and happy.  Not only are we not encouraged to address negative emotions, we are judged, even made fun of, for addressing them.  We need to remember that we are humans with souls that feel pain as well as joy and that there is nothing more courageous than lowering our masks and feeding that soul.
It is difficult to lay down a burden that hasn't been acknowledged.  I've noticed since I've made more of an attempt to connect with and respond to what my soul needs, the anger, bitterness and frustration aimed at others have almost disappeared completely.  Leaving behind that burden is incredibly peaceful.  This genuine peace untethers the joyful moments as well.

I don't know if you've ever cried in the rain.  I have, and it was one of the most healing, rejuvenating, and surprisingly uplifting experiences.

Grace in, peace out