I have been experiencing a lot of heavy emotions lately. Ha, I’m sure we all have.  In the midst of this global crisis of pandemic virus spread and social isolating, my husband has to have immediate spinal surgery.  Tomorrow morning surgeons will be replacing the herniated disc in his neck that has been causing his intense and debilitating shoulder pain.  

I know there’s never a good time for a surgery or a pandemic, but I’m feeling a little double-booked right now.

I’ve been trying to heed my own advice and let my emotions surface and pulse through me without resisting them or holding them in my body. I need to be strong and resilient for my family. I need to be able to swing back from the rocketing pendulum arc of my intense feelings and find my center of gravity.

I am the rock. I am the safety. I am the nurturer. I am the caretaker. 

But I am also afraid.

I am afraid of the uncertainty of tomorrow and beyond, of the bigness of all this, and of the difficulty of carrying it.

The Fear is not there constantly, but sometimes it rises up and knocks me down like a wave.

So I have been allowing myself to FEEL these emotion waves, even if they shake my body down to the floor and undulate through me in wails and sobs.  

I let it have me for a bit. 

And I let myself sink into the loud drama of being scared and overwhelmed.

But I don’t follow it down into the abyss. I don’t want to get lost in it.

I just FEEL it as it rolls up from my stomach, and I let it blast out of me in sounds and tears.  I curl inward like a small child and pound my fists on the ground.  And then it ebbs away, having run its course.  

Yet, like any crashing powerful wave, it erodes me down ever so slightly, and I emerge with deeper lines and a softer edge.

©Skye Nicholson 2020

---