McLaren’s Creek Wetlands in Ken Reid Conservation Area
Note: I apologize for two copies of Part 2. After sending, I realized I had typed Part 3 in the heading (instead of Part 2) and I resent it with the correction and so you received two copies. This was confusing for some of you, so I am sorry about that. If you haven’t read Part 2, you may want to start there.
Autobiography in Five Short Chapters by Portia Nelson Chapter I I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost… I am hopeless. It isn’t my fault. It takes forever to find a way out. ________________________________________ Chapter II I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don’t see it. I fall in again. I can’t believe I am in this same place. But it isn’t my fault. It still takes a long time to get out. ________________________________________ Chapter III I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it there. I still fall in… it’s a habit… but, my eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately. ________________________________________ Chapter IV I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it. ________________________________________ Chapter V I walk down another street.
After I published Part 1, a dear friend send me a private message and said, “I’m worried about you. Are you ok?”
I texted back, “Why are you worried?”
This person highlighted several lines I had written.
“When I attach my self-worth to success, but everything I do feels less than, so I dread the future.” And. “It is becoming obvious to me that any grieving brings up all grieving and I’ve been practicing how to do it, coming up short, for a very long time.”
I texted back, offering reassurance that my recent crisis had somewhat resolved. Confiding in my close friend that February day, being able to express exactly how I felt - along with her openness and validation of my feelings - had shifted something for me, in a positive direction. That quote I found in her living room, that immediate start of an answer to my prayer. And, after years of reading the right books, doing the challenging work with my life coach and learning to love myself I had finally built enough courage to share my struggles with my readers, in the hope that it might help someone who is struggling in a similar way. This is the point of living, isn’t it? To be in community means to show up, exactly how we are, whether it’s comfortable or not. Whether we are feeling weak or strong.
I never know how my words will land. My first instinct, after reading this text, was to feel anxious that I had shared too much. Been too vulnerable. And I felt exposed. That old fear of being “found out” gripped me around the neck. I wondered along with him, “Do I need to be worried about me?”
I was remembering back to that time when I was deeply depressed. It feels like forever ago but I was twenty-four years old. Every day felt like treading water after falling deep, deep down into the long, round shape of an ancient well. It was so dark that I could not see anything beyond the moon-lit shape of my hands grasping ancient stone ledges. If I let go, I would have fallen all the way down into nothingness. I would have drowned. I remember how much I clambered to keep my head above water. Treading. Shivering. Gasping for air. Absent need for food. I was just trying to stay alive. All I could sense was cold and distance from everyone and everything. Nothing and no one could reach me.
I then remember the day a classmate/friend commented that I seemed “fragile.” I was both devastated and relieved in the same moment. Instantly, I dropped the facade that I was doing it well and that I would be ok on my own, facing it all - independently. My secret was out. I was no longer able to hide the deep emotional pain I was living. It was beyond any sadness I had ever felt. I now believe that it was the culmination of years of repressed and unexpressed grief.
“Many people will agree that suppression is the least effective emotional regulation strategy available, and yet it’s the most common go-to coping technique. In a sense, emotional suppression is simply just ignoring your feelings, or invalidating them by believing they’re wrong. This is dangerous because your emotions are responses that are designed to keep you alive and well. This problem is created, of course, from basic emotional intelligence not being common knowledge. Rather than face the scary unknown, we just avoid it."
101 ESSAYS THAT WILL CHANGE THE WAY YOU THINK Brianna West
I remember the growing awareness of beginning to acknowledge my emotions. That old limiting belief that “feelings weren’t important or valid” was no longer working for me. I was waking nightly at 2 am, my heart pounding out of my chest. I was laying there for hours until I fell asleep, just before my alarm went off. I was getting up to study - again - for the next set of exams for my thirteen courses, my eyes feeling like glue and sandpaper. I cried just looking in the mirror. This was very strange for me - I had always prided myself on not being much of a crier. I kept going. I kept going. I kept going.
But the treading was getting more tiring and I did not want to do it anymore.
Someone else noticed that I was not myself, and on her advice, I talked to the school counsellor at my chiropractic college. He suggested that I might need an antidepressant to break the cycle and he sent me to a doctor who listened quietly and offered empathy and kindness. I remember thinking it was the first time I did not feel alone in so many months. I went on Prozac and within six weeks I began to feel a bit more like “myself” again. I had stopped denying, I received some validation and then got the help I needed. Of course, it took some time to determine what was really wrong. And then it took even more time to treat my - then unmanageable - low levels of serotonin. I stayed on those tiny pink and blue capsules for the next year and a half of chiropractic school and weaned off them once I graduated. I have never needed them again and I am so thankful for that.
Back then, it seemed like anything or everything could break me. I had tried to share with a few friends and family how I was feeling, but there was too much shame surrounding my emotional pain. I grew up in a family where no one admitted sadness and instead it came out in sarcasm, anger or stoicism. We laughed a lot but I never saw my parents cry and I was told that my own crying wouldn’t help. I believed them. They didn’t know how to let themselves show their own emotions, how could they help me feel mine? I do not blame them. I blame the generational cyclical repression of emotions. I blame toxic positivity. I blame the “fake it till you make it” belief that I still sometimes find in my own self-talk. I still feel that shame sometimes after crying, whether I am alone or not. While my experience with depression and anxiety had subsided, the fear persisted. What IF it does happen again? Do I need to be worried about me?
My father wrote me the most beautiful affirmation after Part 2:
“I never realized you struggled with grief the way you describe. Your writing will draw me closer to what’s going on in your heart and mind. Transparency is a virtue that is seldom manifest in our family. Instead, we’re left to “figure it out.” I believe transparency is a great relief of the soul’s stress and our transparency before the Lord makes us more whole in who we are.”
Often that “figuring it out” first looks like resistance to how we’re feeling. In February, I had been resisting, again and my emotions were telling me something needed changing. Once I finally acknowledged how grief felt like it was crushing me, I could stop resisting it. And, I still needed to talk it out. While I do not think I was in danger of my 24-year-old experience I hate to think how much worse I could have felt if I tried canning the heavy feelings that were surfacing. And, after I shared them, they were not so heavy anymore. And no one told me I was “fragile.” She reminded me that it was a part of our human experience. That text, which prompted this post, also ended with the message, “I’ve got you,” permanently etched on my heart. Thank you also to my other readers who validated and spoke kind words. It all helps to remind me that I am always connected to the ones I love.
While I now have so many more tools and healthier coping mechanisms than I had when I was twenty-four, the reality is that when we do not make the space to share how we feel, we suffer needlessly and potentially drown in those feelings.
Psychologist Carl Jung contended that, “What you resist not only persists, but will grow in size.”
Long before I began building the courage to write about my dark and shameful secrets,” researcher Brene’ Brown was writing her bestseller “Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way we Live, Love, Parent, and Lead.” She writes:
“Yes, we are totally exposed when we are vulnerable. Yes, we are in the torture chamber that we call uncertainty. And yes, we’re taking a huge emotional risk when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable. But there’s no equation where taking risks, braving uncertainty, and opening ourselves up to emotional exposure equals weakness.”
Oh good. During the days after I posted about my midlife crisis, I picked up her book, again. I remembered that I am not weak in admitting that I feel weak. I am not weak when I am sad. I am not weak when I need help. Where was this book 24 years ago?
The last time I saw Gerry he quoted an old Buddhist proverb.
When the student is ready, the teacher appears.
On February 6th, I had written in my journal: “Do I have power to shape how I feel?” What I have realized since writing that question, is that there is no resolution to the pain of loss and grief. I have been looking at it through the wrong lens. Rather, grief is an invitation to feel our feelings. Allow ourselves to move through the “valley of the shadow of death” and continue to wherever we are being invited to go. Grief is a reminder that we are not meant to go it alone. Sometimes therapy is what we need and sometimes working with the right coach is even better.
We get to influence how we shape our feelings but not in a robotic or detached way. 20 years ago my unexpressed grief was chasing me. It had nowhere to go - no outlet. My brain was on overload and it needed some reprogramming. This experience led me to taking a tiny step towards mental, emotional and spiritual wholeness.
Maybe our feeling are there for paying attention to. Maybe they are an invitation for us to allow them to shape us, by allowing them to shape how we see our world. Hiding them wasn’t working for me back in my twenties and it certainly isn’t now that I am in the middle of my life.
Maybe the crisis comes as an invitation to step into greater awareness. A deeper mindfulness. Maybe the crisis is happening FOR us as much as it’s happening TO us. I know it isn’t easy. In fact, some days it can be hard to get out of bed. Some days, the headspace is a battle ground, one in which you want no part of. And I’m learning that’s ok too. I can choose whether I want to show up for myself or wait until another day. And I am learning that NOW is the time to stop denying how I feel.
What I am LISTENING to What a difference a day makes (click this link)
JOURNALLING for 10 minutes, set a timer for 5 minutes for each one. Remember to keep writing if you don’t want to stop when the timer goes off.
What are you denying?
Think of someone you feel safe with? Dead or alive. Write a letter and tell him or her how you are feeling - about everything. (You can do whatever you want with the letter.)
Jacklyn, your writing invokes my desire to read this.. while at a cabin , alone, with unlimited time to have heart-to-heart with God, asking that my dark corners that I’ve either buried so bloody deep, or ignored when they are right in front of me, scooting to the left or right, and whew.. nearly dealt with it, are raised to my consciousness, and I/they won’t run back to the hole in the sidewalk. Much love your pour into these Jaclyn.. you are loved back my friend!
It always amazes me how much things shift within us when we allow ourselves to feel and be seen for exactly what’s going on within us
Your dad’s feedback brought tears to my eyes. What a gift you have given him by being vulnerable and sharing from your heart ❤️