Be True to yourself through feeling

Dear Hearts,

Be True to Yourself is wonderful but tricky when you don’t know how. I did not always know how to be true to myself and I am still learning and refining as depths arrive for me to dive into and reclaim.

When I was 25 I was a second mum to my close friends child. We lived together through out her pregnancy, I was her birth support partner, the first to hold her when she came into the world, I fed this child from early by bottle due to some difficulties feeding and I bonded with her so deeply over the first year of her life.

Back then I had no idea what I had opened myself up to. When my friend met someone and moved to Canada I was not prepared for the loss that I would experience.

My heart broke into pieces. It ached and I would walk the streets on my own with an intensity of pain that I did not know what to do with. I was haunted with dreams where I would see this child and not be able to reach her. I would wake up feeling so desperate and heart broken.

I missed her sounds in the morning, holding her, being with her. She was too young to speak on the phone. And back then technology was not as it is today.

There was not really acknowledgement from others, it was like nothing had happened. But for me I had lost a child. I also felt bad for my feelings. I did not know how to explain to my friend how I felt. I found calls and even the idea of visiting too painful because I would have to say goodbye again and I just couldn’t do it.

One day I woke up and the first thought was “I’ve got to buy a guitar”. It came after waking once again to the silence in the house. That same day I bought a guitar and I began playing basic chords, writing and singing songs.

The music filled a hole but the feelings I denied were already layered. As I did not know how to give myself the heart space back then and process the primal feelings that were provoked. I did not even think I had a right to feel what I felt because I was not her true mother.

It created a split in my friendship and I blamed myself for this. I felt so guilty that I could not get on with things. There were so many feelings I pushed away. I was so cultured to do this that I did not know I was doing it. I tried to fix things but seemed to only make it worse. I did not know how be true to myself and what that looked like on a feeling and emotional level.

I was plagued with guilt, doubt, fear and denied the true feelings that arose by thinking I should feel happy for my friend and I should be able to detach myself and let go.

All these undercurrent feelings that I pushed away because I thought I should show up differently became a weight inside. I did not know how to move them. I did not understand things about myself that I do now.

For years that part of my life was frozen in time. I had not understood what was happening on an emotional/ feeling level and I had not released the charge of everything I had felt. How could I when I held so much judgement toward myself.

I see this too in women who come to see me. The apologising for her tears or the mentalising of feeling. Deflection through humour. I hear so often a woman say I thought I dealt with that, I’m surprised emotion is coming forward because I’ve been really good, I’ve been doing really well, I’ve been really strong. It is interesting how we think uncomfortable feelings and emotional release is not doing well.

These judgements of our feelings happen unconsciously and they stop us from full expression, that is the release of a charge inside that needs to complete its full movement.

Nervous system work is all the rage at the moment. What affects our nervous system is the denial of true feeling. In one moment so many layers can bury the felt response. These layers create a split, also known as polarisation either to father energy or to mother energy which means above and below are not able to receive each other completely.

The way Western culture is around feeling and emotion is an example of this. We have favoured theory and mental processes over feeling. Look at our school systems they have been based on the mental body. I went to a music school and I found the teachings so dreary only catering for academic minds. We are taught to disregard feeling so early in life. The way our mothers and fathers are with feeling and emotion has a huge impact on how we process this vital body. We cannot receive in others what we cannot receive in ourselves.

I found transformation, through healing emotion.

I have come to understand that the majority of culture pushes away feeling and emotion without even knowing it. I have learnt that the world cannot embody the feminine until feeling and emotion are respected and accepted. Those who feel very aligned to the feminine tend toward feelings of invisibility, deep grief, low value in the world and can find it difficult to feel a sense of place and space for themselves here on Earth. Understandably since Mother essence in collective consciousness has been so denied.

Being true to ourselves takes practice. We are exercising a muscle, the true feeling muscle and we have conditioning around that muscle that can stop us from allowing it. The first step is awakening this muscle and noticing the conditioning that does not allow this muscle to move.

Stay anchored in your own heart,

With courage and strength,

Simone