Feeling the Emotion

It's often difficult to remember, especially in the thick of feeling emotional, that it's healthy to accept emotion. To not judge yourself for feeling certain things. To just allow the emotion to exist, pay attention to the fact that it's there, acknowledge it gently. And give yourself the space to experience it, without judging yourself, pushing the feelings away, resisting, or fighting it.

When you can stop and let yourself feel your emotions, it often is exactly what is needed to help lift the urgency of the moment, the weight of those raw feelings, and allow them to flow through you and out into the universe.

I think Kahil Gibran summed it up quite eloquently.

"Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives? When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Sorrow is the greater." But I say unto you, they are inseparable. Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your head board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed. So you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy. Only when you are empty are you at a standstill and balanced."