feelings
feelings of change
Hi sweet beings, I ask you how you are each week. And I truly mean it. How are you feeling? It doesn't need to be good/bad. But maybe sticky, crunchy, tingley?
I am a big feeler. I've always been told I was “too sensitive”. Shit happens in the world, I feel it. I cry. And then get angry. I show up to the protest, chuck my money at an organization that needs it. I use my feelings of “too sensitive” for change.
The rise of Anti-Asian sentiment across North America (the world) is part of the conversations at home. My partner family is mixed-Asian heritage, race is almost always a topic of conversation at dinner “All my colleagues think I am Indigenous”, “yah no one even believes me when I say I am Asian”, “The host didn’t believe us when we said the reservation was for Peng”. I remember sitting around the table last year in February and they were saying they were nervous to cough while at the gym because they thought people would be mad at them, or thought they were sick. I have thought about that almost every day the last year. When the world hurts, I cry. When your family hurts, I get stuck in my sadness. I get stuck in my feelings.
BUT THAT IS OKAY!! To FEEL your FEELINGS of deep grief + sadness. When I am in the deep pool of sadness I think, how lucky am I to be sad?
How lucky am I that I get to love my partner? How lucky am I that I get to know his family? How lucky am I that I get to love them so much? How lucky am I to know this big love, and to feel so sad when it hurts? And how lucky am I that I get to have these big feels of love and sadness all rolled into one big cry? WHAT A DEEP BLESSING TO HAVE THESE FEELINGS OF SADNESS AND LOVE AND GRIEF AND JOY. WHAT A DEEP BLESSING OF BEING ALIVE!
Feelings are our SUPERPOWERS. When we use our feelings, when we check in with our nervous system, when we use our bodies as a resource for feeling, when we listen closely we can TRANSFORM our feelings into TOOLS! We can use feelings for GOOD! FOR LIBERATION FOR ALL!! FOR ACTION! Feelings allow us to have the awkward conversations at the dinner table. Feelings allow us to be compassionate and give what we can share. Feeling allow ourselves to share in the collective grief of being alive and then CHANGE THE MOTHER FUCKIN WORLD!
My wish, hope prayer for you today is to feel your feelings. To be really vulnerable with yourself and get honest with HOW AM I DOING? WHAT DO I NEED? WHAT CAN I SHARE? Feel your feelings. They need you. We need you.
Ways + Places to feel feelings
Cry
Scream
Dance
Don't look at your phone
Yell
Call your friend
Dance more
I love you all,
xx
phoebe
p.s
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