What We Do with Our Emotion + My Story on Being Real

We are human beings with emotions. We have a heart.

It beats.

It feels.

In a world where we often spend a lot of time in our heads- we feel and move less to find ourselves thinking more.

Somewhere along the road, many of us grow up believing that emotion is too messy and raw to be expressed. Many of us feel the need to stuff down, hide our feelings as if they are something to be ashamed of.

Our need to talk about how we feel and express ourselves hasn't always been honored and seen as a sign of our strength and beauty which it is.

 Somehow we thought that putting on a masque, hiding our feelings and vulnerability from the world is how we move through life.

But how are we to move through life feeling human if we are not acknowledging the very part of ourselves that makes us human? 

In this time more than ever, we are experiencing the need to connect and share. To feel that that we belong, that what we are doing with our lives is meaningful in this world. And while I acknowledge how resourceful technology is, how many opportunities we open up by using it, I can also say that technology doesn't provide us with that meaningful, soul-satisfying human connection that we all need.

We are so good at building walls. At numbing how we feel. We learn to use food, alcohol, drugs, sex, violence and even technology to help us build our walls instead of simply allowing ourselves to be vulnerable.

Let's learn to take down our walls. To embrace uncertainty and discomfort so that we can release ourselves from the limits of our expectations of how things should be.

I talk about vulnerability in many of my blogs. Why? Because I know the power we can find in it. It is our vulnerability that makes us really feel alive. It is our vulnerability that allows for true understanding and connection.

In my life, I didn't know what I do now about vulnerability, self expression and connection and how they all tie together growing up. It was through experience that I realized what being real is all about. And it was only when I allowed myself to be vulnerable that I found myself and true connection.

I grew up with the belief that life was supposed to be neat. That because letting out our emotion and being honest- with ourselves and the people around us- felt uncomfortable, it was somehow wrong. What I didn't realize then was that when we embrace all of our emotion including our pain and anger, we naturally ourselves to experience real connection and joy. We open the door to gratitude, creativity and joy. 

Blessings,

Julie