Over this spring & summer, I have been listening to many of your profound questions at my book signings. They have helped me to realize what really helped me move more deeply into my grief and pain to allow me to feel a transformation in my life and work. I kept thinking back to the experience of writing my memoir and how I felt after I completed it. I was able to process my difficult feelings by being in them again, by turning towards them and feeling them fully while writing about them. I had pushed through them to get my life moving again, but I had not actually processed them fully. What told me this? How my life felt different afterwards–I had new energy, a new perspective of myself that was more empowered and purposeful, and a sense of deep self-confidence. I felt more alive and present.
When you choose to feel your feelings totally you are able to process the emotional content in your body in whatever way that needs to go. Tears, screams, jolts, silent awareness, tingling, intense sensations that rise and fall, a falling away, melting, warm connection, insight, are all ways we release or let feelings go in our bodies. Deborah Eden Tull, in Luminous Darkness speaks about the importance of our agency or choice in bringing about transformation: “While we can feel like there is nothing to hold onto while swimming through the mysterious tides of life transition, loss or illness, there is always a choice. It is because we have nothing familiar to hold onto that we can open our hearts to fresh and nonhabitual forms of perception. These are the most potent opportunities for insight, healing and transformation.” (p. 133)
Writing my memoir was not the only time I actually chose to feel my feelings deeply. At my last talk, I was asked a very important question,”Where do you place the Climb up Kilimanjaro Experience you write about in your memoir on your Five Step Voyage? Or, what Stage is that on your midlife voyage? The answer is Stage 3- Deep DIving and Stage 4 Rebirthing. These two stages lead to each other and back again in a spiral design. I call this the Grief/Rebirth and Rebirth/Grief Cycles in my Companion Workbook that guides you on this midlife voyage.
I had to think hard about this because it wasn’t clear when I wrote my memoir how that “Leap Experience” fits into my model. Now I know that experience was essential for me to be able to feel my feelings more deeply and not be afraid of them anymore, and to face my fears. I didn’t know I was afraid of my feelings — but as a child I had been taught to shut them down because my parents and others in my past were uncomfortable with the intensity of how I expressed feelings. You know, kids just express and it’s only how others respond that determines how we learn to repress or cut off our feelings for ourselves over time. I had learned to shut them down and reject them early on my life. Learning how to let them out again and feel them totally was what the climb up Killi was all about for me.
I call things a “Leap Experience” when you choose to leap across a
difficult divide in order to see more of who you are—to create an opportunity for expanding yourself beyond what you think you are to something greater. The exciting part is you were actually that expanded before, but you weren’t letting yourself feel your greatness! Life does that to us and we need to choose these kinds of experiences to help us break open ourselves again. You can choose a “Leap Experience” for yourself by placing yourself outside of your comfort zone– or you can find curiosity and kindness towards yourself when you are in the middle of a horrific life challenge that is consuming you. Both can offer opportunities for growing you bigger.
So, as I reached the top of Killimanjaro, I realized I had let go of all the fears and inhibitions my mind had created for me to hold me back my feelings and I was experiencing my expandedness more than I had ever felt it before. This is a sign of a rebirthing experience. I was feeling feelings so intensely and they were moving through me so quickly that I realized I had to slow it down in order to feel it all. That’s when I learned to breathe and slow it all down. The physical exertion had speeded it all up and released it and then the exhaustion coming down helped me slow it all down. When I got down to my tent I wrote down some of what I had been experiencing. It was helpful to feel it again more deeply by writing about it. You can read about how all of this unfolded in Chapter 15 of my memoir.
Another way to approach actually feeling your darkest feelings is to focus on your fears. If you can begin to document what you are afraid of and how it manifests in your life, you can begin to find the Protector parts that are holding you back. In Chapter 15 of my memoir I was doing this—documenting and working with my fears. When you get to know these fears and how they show up, you can befriend them and ask them to move over so you can get closer to the Exiles underneath. These are the parts that are holding the pain. IFS work is helpful in leading you to identify the parts that are holding these fears and why. See my Exercise in the Workbook on “Finding your Protector Parts.” It takes a lot of self-trust that you can develop slowly inside of you as you get to know these parts and their jobs in your internal system.
In short, Leap Experiences can be so revealing and empowering if you allow yourself to mindfully observe the whole experience and not check out with any of it. They help you work with your fears. Noticing how nature can allow you to release and feel more naturally what you are feeling, holding us in a special loving non-judgmental way. Nature-based retreats can also create this kind of expansive experience for you and that’s why I offered retreats in nature and adventure-based retreats when I returned from this climb. You can create your own nature-based leap experience!
This Stage of the Midlife Voyage where you begin to experience your feelings deeply is Stage 3: Deep Diving. This Stage begins the Second Half of the Midlife Voyage. The first step is always to replace Judgment with Curiosity and listen to the Part or Parts of your being compassionately. When you allow yourself to courageously face your fears and move them over mindfully, you are able to feel your feelings slowly and safely through witnessing yourself. I’ve met many women who, like me, were taught to push down, ignore or stuff in the closet all their young parts that have feelings. This stage is so important to actually free these young parts and give them the gift of being whole – feelings and all. When we allow our bodies to feel our feelings fully we have shifted who we are totally inside and out. Those feelings must be embodied and felt to create a true New You!
This new awareness of yourself is the New You coming forth and the new Parts of you that you haven’t met before coming into your awareness. This is the Rebirthing Stage. It takes staying with yourself and not abandoning yourself — not running away when it feels too big and scary. It takes slowing yourself down and allowing the process to find room within all of you; this new expanded you. It takes choosing to do the Deep Diving and facing the grief!
Take some time to use this practice: Feeling Your Feelings, several times and practice allowing yourself to feel how your feelings show up in your body and how they get identified by you and how you treat them. Journaling about what you notice will help you go a bit deeper into the experience also.
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f this has been helpful for you, you will definitely benefit from purchasing the Companion Workbook and beginning to deepen your work with your own feelings. You never know where you might end up! Here’s the link .
