Emotions Are the Gateway to Everything We Desire

Being a feelings personality type, I’m a very emotional person.

Yet, there was a long stretch of my life where I learned not to cry.

I was numb and depressed and totally closed off to the world to get by. I would only cry alone when it was safe (usually in my car in some abandoned parking lot), and even the saddest of movies couldn’t get me to well up.

Ever since loss and trauma cracked me open (and all the healing and growth work that’s come since then), I cry much more freely. At sad things and happy things and all the randomness in between. I cry when I’m frustrated, when I’m sad, and when I feel love and support. I cry when I’m a certain kind of mad. I cry at the news especially, feeling the ripple effect of every death or horrific happening.

I feel.
A lot more.
Much more richly.

It’s truly exhausting and gut-wrenching at times, but I never want to go back to that numb and dissociated version of myself. I feel love, joy, gratitude, purpose, and fulfillment even more fully because I allowed (and continue to allow) myself to drop into the depths of grief. Because I learned to feel the totality of my rage and fury and glean the wisdom it has to give. Because I face my loss and heartbreak rather than stuffing or turning away.

I feel.
All of it.
In all its rawness.

Emotions are life.

They’re also the gateway to everything we desire when we learn how to experience and work with them productively. When we stop filling the void with other things and sink into our present experience without fear or resistance.

Everything you want to experience is right on the other side of the things you’re fighting so hard not to feel. Let yourself go there. No stories, no stewing, no stuffing it down.

You will come through it.