Blog
Learning to let the emotions in
by Amy Riley
September 14, 2011
Last week I was emotional. I hate to admit it. I didn’t want to admit it. And, I think in the end, it really served me best to admit it.
Last week…
- My kids transitioned to new classrooms. My son into a classroom of 3 to 5 year olds (he’s still 2 for 2 more weeks!) and my daughter to an entirely new school. And, our new nanny started working with us in the mornings before my daughter goes to school.
- I paused my marathon training. A tendon in my ankle is sore and I’m giving it rest.
- My daughter had a nasty looking rash.
All of this is fine. The kids are doing great. I caught my injury early, and I’ll be able to run that marathon.
AND, all of this caused me to be frayed around the edges. As the week went on, I had to admit to myself that I wasn’t a parent who was just breezing through the school transition, I wasn’t a runner who would be in “ultimate” condition come race day, and I was disappointed and emotional.
I didn’t think that I deserved to be emotional because, in the big picture, everything was fine. We were evolving to the next stage in life in both of these areas. I was learning important lessons and all was good. I didn’t have anything to REALLY complain about.
Yet, I was seeing that it wasn’t working for me to deny what I was feeling. I could give myself rationale all day long about how I shouldn’t feel the way that I was feeling, yet that was what I was feeling. What we resist persists. So, I bucked up and admitted that I wasn’t a super woman who could do this without intense emotion.
Whew. It was a relief. I got support from friends and my husband once I admitted it. I even felt more compassionate towards myself. Letting the feelings in actually helped me see what was going on more clearly in the big picture. In three weeks this ankle injury will be a blip on the screen. In a couple months I won’t even remember some of the concerns I had during the kids’ school transition. And, it’s okay to be emotional about it now. This is what being engaged and present to my life looks like. I love and I care and I have running goals and I want my kids to feel secure and happy.
And, I learned an important lesson about letting emotions in.
What about you? What emotion might you be resisting? What if you just let the emotion in and admitted it?