Emotional Authenticity

 

 

 

It is no longer sustainable to hide our emotions.  As the long isolating months of change take a heavier and heavier toll, we begin to see that the experts were right; there is a second wave and it is worse.  So many are realizing that pent up emotional authenticity is starting to take its toll as well.

It is NOT all good.  We are NOT doing all good.  We cannot change if we are not real and raw.  We can hide our tears but we do not grow and thrive through this.  We are NOT fine.  Those of us taught to hide our emotions, to be brave, to be happy, to be good, are now paying a heavy toll for stuffing our emotional honesty. 

We have said we were sorry when we were NOT.  We have silenced our fears to never be seen as weak.  We have stuffed our fists in our mouths and we have screamed into pillows.  We divorced our feelings and only let show what was acceptable for those around us.  We ‘dried up’ when we felt like weeping.  We ‘shut up’ when we told our truths and they were not accepted or validated or believed.  It is NOT okay and we are NOT okay.  We would be dishonest if we said else.  We might be surviving this all.  We might be trying like a paddling duck to thrive beneath the placid looking waters.  We have to accept and surrender to the truths that this is NOT easy, this is danged hard on us, and we may be doing a whole lot more emotional work than we ever dared admit.  At some point we have to admit it:  This is pain in so many ways and we can no longer silence our authentic emotional voice, we have to find new ways of coping and the only way is to be authentic. 

Life is wobbling us.  Life is about the pounding of our hearts, or the slowing drum that means we are drowning here.  Our previously minimized feelings, our numbed feelings, are packed so tight, we are going to blow. 

We are imperfect beings, they say, if we are authentic.  We have minimized our self-love to be in service of anyone else but self.  Or, we have been so focused/self-serving our attention-getting emotionalism, on mememememe that we missed that the emotional world was changing and now we do not know how to remove the masks we have worn for most of our lives.  

It is scary to be authentic.  Women have long been told to hush, to be ‘seen and not heard’.  We were taught to be sexually evocative in all our wily ways, and we got what we did not want at all. Or, we were cold and said we wanted more passion / emotion but shut down anyone who expressed such.   And here we are, sitting in the middle of a huge muddle at how to be Present in this present situation. 

Authentic expression is difficult as heck.  It is frightening to be so raw and real.  It is uncomfortable.  It is exactly opposite to how we usually cope, emotionally, that is required.  I cannot hear my own howl in the forest for the many others doing the same and we are getting nowhere and nothing but ‘same old’, same old, outcomes that never cut to the real chase.  Begin today to follow this creed:

I shall NOT ignore the authenticity of my heart.

I shall NOT ignore my own inner light.

I will NOT let the opening of my heart scar over for anyone.

I will NOT let make little of my own feelings.

I shall NOT ignore other’s deep emotions nor stifle them.

I shall NOT apologize for my own truths.

I shall NOT stop floods of tears that come from my truths.

I shall NOT ignore breaking of my own heart.

I shall NOT stifle someone else’s vulnerability nor my own.

 

Let us be our own beautiful authentic Self with all our bumps and lumps and dumps and frumps, with all our wars and scars, with all our cheers and tears.  Let us BE! 

©Carol Desjarlais 6.11.20

***with Jenny Manno  first try at Nov 3, 2020 challenge