Your emotions are medicine

We are in a time of great awakening out of the illusion of separation, into the remembrance that a different way is possible. And in the meantime, it’s heartbreaking to witness seemingly endless atrocities to our beloved human family and our earth kin as well.

It’s a strange time to be living in. Filled with hope and beauty and grief and rage and shock and joy and love.

I hope you’ve been taking care of yourselves through these times, and also doing what you can to support those in need. We are all in this together, whether or not it feels that way sometimes.

I do believe this is a time of great awakening out of the forgetting that we’re separate from one another.

The cauldron of emotions that’s activated now is part of the beauty of being an open-hearted human. We get to feel. We get to experience the full range of life, and therefore hold space for the great spectrum of emotions in others.

The healing powers of grief

Something that isn’t talked about enough is the medicinal value of emotions, and how they’re often not acknowledged as such.

How when we avoid certain emotions, or cut off certain ranges of experiences within our bodies that are “not welcome,” then we cut off part of our life force energy along with that.

For in order to become fully embodied, we must welcome our full emotional selves.

Specifically, grief is something many of us tend to avoid, but in grief, incredible healing and medicine lies.

Grieving is a practice. And when we learn to grieve, we allow ourselves to keep our hearts open in painful times, and not harden ourselves off to the world.

Grief is the river that carries us, flowing towards connection, and away from the dam of separation.

Is your body holding on to grief?

There is a phenomenon that I see in my practice a lot, in the bodies I work with.

I often find parts of the body that have been so used to holding tight, or holding back, or holding breath…. that when they’re invited to soften, open, or loosen there’s a fear of letting go, regardless of how painful it is to remain where they are.

And as I hold the space of invitation to relax, there eventually comes a release as the softening starts to happen.

And, alongside the relief and openness, with thawing of the tension comes the waters of grief. Grief in recognizing the extent to which they’ve been in pain, or disconnected for so long.

Grief in the fact that they didn’t open sooner. This grief can turn into resentment or frustration or anger towards ourselves if we don’t allow ourselves to simply allow the tears to move and soften us.

I think of this as the grief of relief.

Maybe you've felt threads of this too?

Once you begin to become aware of how alive, aware, and awake all of Life is (including your intelligent body), there is a subtle grief that may need to be tended to, for how long you’ve lived in separation.

Grief for how long you’ve overridden the needs and longings of your body and heart.

Grief for how long you’ve neglected your spiritual self.

Grief for how long your heart has remained guarded, even while longing to be soft and open.

Grief for how long you've gone unaware of the living intelligence all around you.

I feel this myself sometimes when I receive a healing so beautiful, or am able to open myself to receive from a plant or another human on a deeper level, or feel my heart able to soften one layer more… There are tears.

Sometimes unnamable, but often I can trace them back to the grief of how painful it was to live in separation or to live in a way that was so closed, and what I was missing out on being in that state.

And grief for how good something feels to finally experience it.

When we learn to open our bodies more and more to the living matrix of life and to the consciousness of our bodies, the shedding of tears happens time and time again.

Tears of gratitude, yes, but also tears of grief for what was lost.

It’s a beautiful process to experience and witness. And I hope I will continue to unravel new layers of this softening within myself for as long as I live.

For we are thawing hundreds or thousands of years of collective disconnection from our living Earth, thawing generations of severance from the wisdom of our bodies.

We are softening and listening and opening, one layer at a time. As long as we continue to say “yes” to the waters, "yes" to surrendering our defenses.

And as we continue to open our hearts when there’s so much pain in the world, we will feel grief.

As we continue to open our hearts and feel more and more connected and alive and aligned with our true soul’s nature, we will likely feel grief here too. Medicinal, healing, waters of grief.

When they flow, they cleanse. When they flow, they soften. When they flow, they open doors to more and more love. They open doors to more and more connection.

If you're seeking support, community, and guidance as you explore the medicine of grief, join me in The Gathering Place — a free place of connection within the Golden Stone Wisdom School.