Comings and Goings

Almost before my feet hit the floor I could feel the lump forming in my throat. Standing in the kitchen a few minutes later, the tears started to flow. Sad. Lonely. Discouraged. Those were the companions that greeted me yesterday morning. Feeling the urge to grab ahold of them, I took a slow, deep breath instead. Rather than attach myself to them, I quietly named them out loud. This created a tiny space between me and them. Instead of ramping them up a notch with an old story about what they might have to say about me and my life, I poured a cup of fresh French Press Coffee and took a sip. Tom showed up, poured some coffee, and sat next to me.

Climbing into the red pickup a few minutes later, we headed out to meet a friend at the bottom of the logging road we hike a couple of times each week. I invited my feelings to come along if they wanted, which apparently they did. Twenty minutes later we all headed up the 1.7 mile stretch of hallowed ground found on that ordinary dirt logging road. Three humans and two dogs, my emotions bringing up the rear.

Somewhere along the way my emotional companions must have taken another trail, because when we climbed back into the truck an hour later, they were nowhere to be found.

There was nothing to fix or mend or do with those feelings. They weren’t there to derail my day unless I let them. They simply needed to keep me company for a spell. The tears helped. The deep breaths helped. Naming them helped. Tom simply being there helped. A hike with a friend helped. And coffee helped (duh).

By inviting them along, they were free to take their leave.

What A Difference A Day Makes

Yesterday was rough. It was one of those days where I went from grumpy to angry to sad to flat to worried to afraid to lonely to resentful to frustrated to annoyed to hopeless to melancholy to…

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

I couldn’t put my finger on it. I couldn’t snap myself out of it. I simply had to live with it and let it pass. It was one of those days that I simply wanted to be over. End of story.

Thankfully, I am recognizing days like yesterday for what they are. A transition day of sorts, and as we all know, transitions can be tough as we move from one state or condition to another.

Transition days usually come on the heels of something big. A big event. An emotional upheaval. A long anticipated adventure coming to an end.

Transition days are when I need to practice not acting on what I think or feel.

Transition days are when I need to practice not taking things out on those around me.

Transition days are when I need to not take myself or my dark thoughts too seriously.

Transition days are when I need to hold my heavy emotions lightly.

This morning I woke up on the right side of the bed. Whatever it was had slipped out during the night, and my heart was at peace.

What a difference a day makes.

No Strings Attached

The other morning I woke up decidedly on the wrong side of the bed, and it went downhill from there. My feelings became the filter through which I saw, heard, and interpreted everything and everyone, and it wasn’t pretty. I felt like a marionette. You know. One of those puppets with strings attached to different parts of the body, including, at least in my case, my mouth. Like The Lonely Goatherd in The Sound of Music, I was at the mercy of the circumstances and emotions pulling on my strings.

Control, it seemed, was out of my hands. Or was it?

What if instead of a marionette I could be more like a hand puppet? Like Daniel Tiger, X the Owl, or Lady Elaine Fairchilde in Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, it could be my hand in charge. A hand puppet isn’t pulled about by external forces. Guidance comes from within.

As a 4 on the Enneagram, emotions are my thing. There isn’t an emotion I haven’t experienced, and the ones that a lot of people work hard to avoid come easily to me. Because big emotions don’t scare me, I can be the calm in the midst of your storm. A quiet, safe place to show up with your grief and sadness, anger and fear, I won’t try to talk you out of how you feel.

As it turns out, being a feeling kind of girl is my gift.

It’s also my curse

Because I tend to lead with my heart, I can easily turn over the controls to my feelings and react accordingly. With, as you might imagine, very mixed results. I’ve been practicing not letting my feelings run the show. Catching myself before losing myself to the emotions of the moment, and that practice is paying off. But this puppet metaphor feels next level. There are no strings attached to those emotions, other than the ones I attach myself.

We Are The Mountain

For us humans, emotions are a tricky thing. They can come and go in the blink of an eye, drop in without notice and drop out just as quickly, or decide to settle in and stay for a spell. Most of us relish what we deem the good emotions, and resist having to endure the ones we’ve come to see as bad or negative. The ones that don’t, well, feel good.

I’ve always been a feeling kind of girl. Emotions, even big, hard, painful ones don’t scare me. However, they can snag me, and before I know it, I’m wrapped around some kind of axle and in full reactive mode. It’s like I am the emotion, rather than me experiencing that emotion. It can be exhausting. For me, and for the people I share life with.

This morning, as most mornings, we sit on the front porch, coffee cups in hand, and read the daily offering of Fr. Richard Rohr, founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

His focus this week is Wisdom.

CAC faculty member, Cynthia Bourgeault, suggests that, “Wisdom is not knowing more, but knowing with more of you, knowing deeper.”

To help us dig deeper into wisdom, what it is, and how to grow more of it, Fr. Rohr created a list of 7 pathways, or ways of knowing, that can help us along our own wisdom way.

One of those pathways is emotion.

“Emotion: Great emotions are especially powerful teachers. Love, ecstasy, hatred, jealousy, fear, despair, anguish: each have their lessons. Even anger and rage are great teachers, if we listen to them. They have so much power to reveal our deepest self to ourselves and to others, yet we tend to consider them negatively. I would guess that people die and live much more for emotional knowing than they ever will for intellectual, rational knowing. To taste these emotions is to live in a new reality afterward, with a new ability to connect.”.

As we sat reflecting on our emotions as a way of knowing with more of ourselves, the changing light hitting Mt. Adams seemed to underscore what we had just read.

We are the mountain.

Emotion is our teacher.

Read the todays meditation in its entirety

The Scream

Ducking my head to walk underneath the small fort we built for the little people in our lives, I dropped to the ground to see if I could add another pushup to my tally. It was raining, and the ground underneath the fort was dry. Standing up, one more pushup under my belt, I headed back out into the rain. Because I was wearing my Seahawks Super Bowl Champs hat I didn’t see the low board ahead of me and walked right into it. I hit my head. HARD. I hate hitting my head.

The next thing I knew, I was bent over, screaming at the top of my lungs. I screamed, and screamed, and screamed, until I couldn’t. It’s a good thing our closest neighbors are a ways away, or they might have called the local sheriff to come investigate.

All I can say is that it felt really, really, really good to scream. It felt like a mixture of rage and fear, and a few other emotions that must have been lodged pretty deep inside for awhile.

I guess I just needed to scream.

There is a lot to be angry and fearful about right now. So many things out of our control. So many things that need to be addressed and fixed and repaired and built and changed, and most of us feel pretty powerless to do anything about it. Whenever we feel powerless, rage and fear aren’t far behind, and those emotions need to come out somewhere. For me, it was a guttural scream, bending over underneath a fort out in the pine trees.

Sometimes I guess we just need to scream. And then stand up and get back to work loving and helping the people and the world within our reach.

Changing Lanes

It might be an overstatement to say that feelings drive my car, but not much of one.

If life were a three lane highway, it is safe to say that I live most of mine in the feeling lane. Yes, I can switch lanes and drive in the thinking or doing lanes, but my default is always feelings first, everything else later. This can make for a tumultuous ride, and at no time has this been more evident than this turbulent year.

When my emotions are of what are typically considered the positive ones, my energy is good. I’m motivated to get things done, can find causes for hope even when things look bleak, and am pretty damn good company to those around me. When overtaken by the darker ones, not so much.

There are three lanes for a reason, and I need to make use of all of them. To lean into thinking and step into doing.

We all have our preferred lane, and can easily fall into our typical patterns of thinking, feeling, or doing. When we find ourselves on auto-pilot, maybe it’s time to change lanes.

With, At, or For?

Last week I made a stop at Target before heading back up the Columbia River Gorge and home. I needed a few groceries, a couple of bottles of wine, paper towels, and for good measure and an alert drive home, a Nitro-Brew With Sweet Cream from the Starbucks on my way out.

They didn’t have any of the groceries I needed, the wine selection was subpar at best, so I consoled myself as I checked out with my paper towels that at least I’d be able to enjoy my caffeinated beverage of choice on the drive home. Except they didn’t serve Nitro-brew at that Starbucks. I might have given the barista a dirty look.

Leaving the parking lot, my Irish-throated Siri told me to turn left, but I was pretty sure he’d gotten his directions mixed up, so I told him in no uncertain terms to shut up. Turning right onto the road I reached into my jeans pocket to grab my Visa card (since I no longer carry a handbag into stores thanks to COVID) and put it back into my wallet. Except it wasn’t there. At the next stop light I frantically checked all of my pockets, the floor of the car, my wallet in case I’d forgotten that I’d already put it away, since forgetting things seems to be my latest new skill.

I thought I was going to explode.

Our credit card was compromised a couple of weeks ago and I’d just spent the better part of a day linking the replacement card to all of the necessary merchants and auto-pay accounts, and the thought of having to do it again was enough to do me in. I screamed at the top of my lungs, pulled a u-turn, yelled at every stop light between me and the Target parking lot, and prayed—well more like yelled at God as if it were Her fault—that by some miracle could I please f-ing find my card on the pavement where I’d parked. Which I didn’t.

Stomping back into Target I had to turn around because I’d forgotten my mask. I stomped back to the car, masked up (I’m a believer) and stomped back inside. Where, in short order, my credit card, which had been turned in by a kindly stranger, was safely in my possession. My little tantrum paid off, it just wore me out.

These days I can get so mad so fast that it makes my head spin. Like a Tesla, I can go from 0-60 in 2.3 seconds, and I never know what is going to set me off. If there were Anger Management Cops handing out tickets, I could wallpaper a room with them.

I’m not the only one either. Almost everyone I know is talking about it too. There are plenty of reasons to be majorly pissed off right now, and it can feel really good to be angry with someone or about something. But it’s exhausting too. Every eruption lets off just enough steam to keep going. Until the next outburst.

In the last conversation with my spiritual director, I told him about all of this anger that seems to come out of nowhere and spill out everywhere. As is his way, he let some silence sit between us before asking “I wonder, Molly, what you are angry for?”

What?

Not angry with.

Not angry at.

Angry for.

And just like that I knew what I was angry for, and what I could do about it.

Anger for is a different kind of animal than that which is with or at.

Anger for doesn’t erupt at, but energizes towards. It motivates us to fight for what we want, not against what we don’t. Rather than explode and cause harm, it exposes what is calling for our help. Anger for shines a light on what is missing, which is the first breadcrumb on the path to finding it.

Anger can get a bad rap. We’re taught to push it down, hold it in, or lock it up. Until we can’t. Which is when we get wrapped around the anger axle and take it out in all the wrong ways for all the wrong reasons.

What are you angry for?

Whatever it is, it’s worth fighting for.

The Tip Of The Iceberg

This morning my throat hurt. Not from a cold or cough, but from screaming during the Seattle Seahawks’ nail biter of a game yesterday. Apparently I needed to scream. Thankfully the game gave me something to scream at, so that I wouldn’t scream at someone.

We are navigating the most challenging times many of us will ever face, and fear runs deep. Often operating below the surface of simply trying to make it through another day safely, and not freak out at the latest headlines, fear is taking an emotional toll on all of us. Cooped up with others, or living with only ourselves for company, that fear often comes out as anger. Not as necessary righteous anger at the injustice, incompetence, and inequality that has been laid bare, but at others who happen to cross our path at the wrong time.

Anger is the tip of fear’s iceberg.

Rather than take it out on one another, let’s look for healthy ways to express our anger, like a slam ball workout, a punching bag, or splitting wood until your arms ache.

Or.

You can tune into the next Seahawks game this coming Sunday at 10AM.

Photo by Frans Van Heerden from Pexels

The Roundabout

Roundabouts, also known as traffic circles, allow traffic to flow in one direction around a central island. There are usually several exits that let drivers continue on down the road. More than once I’ve found myself going around a traffic circle several times, somehow having missed my exit. Eventually I would get out of the circle and continue on my way.

Sometimes processing an emotional issue feels a lot like getting caught in a roundabout. We need to keep motoring around the matter in question until finally, we are ready to exit the circle, and continue on our way.

Photo by Tuur Tisseghem from Pexels

Old Friends, Part 2

Two days ago I posted a piece here called Old Friends, about emotions that we’ve known for so long that they have become, well, like old friends. We know them, are comfortable with them, and at times, we need to spend time with them. However, because we are so familiar with them, it is easy to allow them unfettered access to our inner living rooms, and they overstay their welcome.

I have more than one old friend when it comes to emotions, but the one I chose to write about was Melancholy because she has been with me for as long as I can remember. As I was writing about her the other day I decided to call her Mel. It was as if that had been her name all along, I just never thought to call her that before.

As it turns out, giving this emotion a name gives me a new handle on what to do when she shows up. I can greet her by name, as in, Well, hello there Mel. I wasn’t expecting you today, but now that you’re here, what am I going to do with you?

Somehow treating her as an actual visitor gives me some agency over how I will deal with her. Do I invite her in for a good visit? After all, she may have important things to share about what is going on for me at the time. On the other hand, if she simply wants to drop in to rehash the past, again, maybe better to send her on her way.

We had family staying with us the day that blog posted, and after reading it together it started a conversation that is still going on and is expanding to more friends and family. We are having fun (mostly) helping each other figure out exactly who these old friends are, what to name them, why they have been with us for so long, and what to do with them when they show up.

Somehow giving them a name is helping us to learn that just because they are old friends doesn’t mean they get to move in.

Photo by Miriam Espacio from Pexels