missed you.

Good morning yogis!

I have missed you! I fell off the face of the daily bliss earth and into my own personal growth for a month!

I say growth, because I know with discomfort comes growth. I know with hard work that requires a new kind of determination, comes growth.

I dropped my first born off at college for his freshman year and felt like my heart might break apart into a million pieces, each piece representing the moments of his childhood that were magical for us. Some people seem to navigate this change so gracefully. Not me.

Of course I am so happy for him and I am very aware that this is how life is supposed to go. I am immensely grateful that he is blessed to be going to a good school. I realize fully all of the goodness of this moment. But as a human being, I am capable of conflicting emotions. I can feel excited for his new beginnings and at the exact same time, sadness for the part that is over. My happiness for his accomplishments can collide with my grief of missing his presence in our home. I can feel so grateful that he is super happy as the feeling of loss crashes right into the side of that gratitude. We are multifaceted beings with layers and layers of emotions.

I share all of this with you because when our feelings don’t line up exactly with the outside world’s compartments, shame sets in and possibly takes over. We can begin to feel as if something is wrong with us.

That is what happened to me. I felt ashamed of my sadness and embarrassment around the hot tears that would not stop coming. I kept thinking, what is wrong with me?

My heart didn’t shatter, it just had to stretch out and expand in new, uncomfortable ways.

Beyond my very personal situation, out into the great big world, the same things could be true. Conflicting emotions, the collision of feelings that seem to oppose each other and the shame that comes from not lining up with compartments that lie outside of the walls of our tender hearts. It’s hard to feel happy when we see so much falling apart around us. And yet, someone we love had a baby. Or we feel compassion for those who lost their homes from the recent weather patterns and at the exact same time we feel excited for the new day ahead.

We have the capacity to feel it all. And as I return to my practice of writing and sharing, I encourage you to give yourself the permission to feel all of your feelings and let the emotions crash into one another. It helps your heart to keep stretching and growing.

Big love,
Tammy