To experience the fullness of feeling often involves a flood of competing emotions. An example of this is commonly experienced before riding a roller coaster - Anxiety and Excitement. Another example I saw recently with a child going away to summer camp - Happiness to go to such a fun event, sadness leaving their family. Authenticity is a tricky thing. Both emotions are true sides of the coin. Yet too often we mask our pain with false cheer. I am so used to covering the unwanted feeling. Pretending my smile does not hide what I don't want you to see.
What complicates things is that I have spent most of my life denying Pain and Sadness. Conjuring Joy. Forgetting Gratitude. Now I am filled with a swirl of pleasant and difficult emotions and I want to make sure that my feelings of pain and grief are not ignored again. The Lovely Crisis:
When you're filled with love gratitude for certain things. And these feelings overpower legitimate grief and sadness around other things. The stronger dog wrestling the bone away from the runt.
I feel like my grief is like a neglected child, straining to be heard and seen amidst a party thrown for their sibling. For a parent in this situation it's hard to give attention to both. Energy is finite. When I sit with my two children of feeling. Joy and Sadness. Gratitude and pain. I feel like the energy each has certainly takes from the other. It seems easiest and most effective to spend time alone with each one. To honor both experiences. Even as the laughs seem louder than the cries in the next room, each are heard while embraced by its mother.
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