Yesterday, I was sitting on a plane back to London, feeling really sad. There were tears in my eyes. I felt the grief of letting go of the tranquillity of the Finnish forest, of sharing moments of beauty and joy with my partner, of not having anywhere to rush, of being in what felt like the most organic habitat. Of the sound of the woodpecker, of the crunching boughs underneath my feet, of the layers of forest smells, of the baby mushrooms cheerfully sticking their colourful heads out from underneath the moss. Of the peacefulness of the lake and the soft iciness of its waters.
By Sebastian Unrau
I was consciously allowing myself to grieve the ending and the parting that it implied. To feel the pain of separation, which sent me all the way back to my childhood, when it was time to say good bye to the warmth of the summer and embrace the harsh reality of the school life that I hated. To welcome those memories in from a different place, from the place of warmth which I did not have back then. Also, to feel my fear of losing the sense of closeness with my partner, knowing how our busy schedules can easily take over and drive us apart, once we reach the British soil. And to welcome the despair and loneliness that were tiptoeing besides the sadness.
I allowed myself to feel it, because over the last couple of years, I have learnt to trust the wisdom of my experience. In the past, I would have tried to calm myself down by downplaying the grief. I would have confidently followed the impulse to say things to myself like: ‘Don’t be silly, you are overdramatising, there is no real ground for that”, or “Stop it, there is no point in being sad – one thing has ended, another one will start”, “Don’t be so negative, just be grateful for what you have, all it well”.
This way of talking to myself, which I learnt from people around me, worked for me in the past. Particularly in my teens, when there was plenty of painful stuff happening in my life, which I had no clue how to be with. I became quite masterful in shifting the focus from what was going on within me to something external. For instance, channelling the energy of my painful emotion into some form of consumption – whether intellectual or material, didn’t really matter. I learnt well how to distract myself from my actual experience and feelings. At the time, I was also convinced that feeling less was a good thing. What’s the point of being negative, right?
To be fair, these voices showed up yesterday as well. And I was tempted by them. Yet I noticed something interesting. In each moment that I was giving in to the impulse to push my sadness away, I immediately felt a lot more distant from my partner. Luckily, the consequence of my disconnection from my experience was very easy to observe, as it got projected on the relational ground between the two of us in a moment where nothing much was happening. My partner was reading, my head was resting on his shoulder. There was barely any relational movement going on, no food on which projections love to feed on. The process of feeling close versus distant was clearly happening only in my head.
By Eric Ward
At one point, I noticed an impulse to physically move further away from him, which I did not act upon. Instead, I noticed the impulse, and chose to engage with my inner experience – a motion that for most of us will require consistent and persistent practice. When I don’t catch myself doing it, I am likely to act my impulse out , which I have done so many times- I will move away from the person whom I perceive as distant and then push them away, when they try to connect. Instead of being present to my inner experience, I will see it happening over there and will probably end up resenting the other person for being distant. Which they may well become, if they my pushing away and resentfulness triggers a sense of rejection in them.
What I am talking about here, is the cost of disowning our actual experience. Of trying to fix it and change it, without honouring it as it is. This cost is high. At the very least, it often costs us our connection to others, be it beings or processes we love. It costs us our authenticity and that is likely to also cost us many other things, including our health and our capacity to feel joy, fulfilment and pleasure, but that is a subject for a different post.
But if we choose to welcome sadness, fear and other uncomfortable instead? That is what happened for me after I had made this choice yesterday. As I embraced my experience within myself, I managed to honestly express it to my partner. I said I was scared of our separation and was feeling very sad. That felt like a very intimate and healing exchange. As I felt authentic and whole within myself, I also felt very close to him. Our actual good-bye was beautiful, and I am smiling now remembering how my heart felt as I was leaving. Open, warm, glowing, full of love. This experience is still within me.
On a different note, I had yet another moment of clarity in terms of why it is so important to own our experience as it is, warts and all. My feelings were clearly showing me what matters to me the most and what I yearn to create more space in my life for. Being in nature, appreciating “simple” things, moving slowly with no rush, being close to the person I love.
By Katharina Von Knobloch
There is nothing more empowering than knowing my experience. As I establish a solid connection with what I value and desire, I can consciously move towards weaving it into my everyday reality. Pragmatically, in my situation, I can invest more time into researching ways to create a home together, invent new ways of connecting while we are physically apart, spend more time in nature (until we can have a house in the forest!), allow for more slowing down moments… That’s what constitutes the horizon of hope, that is so important for us, humans, to have.
Having felt it all yesterday, I woke up today, feeling fresh and creative, ready for the new chapter of my life. There have been some lingering glimpses of sadness and nostalgia, and I made space for them too. I chose to see them as reminders of the things that matter so much to me, that I don’t want to forget. And now I am writing this post, which could not have happened had I chosen to distract myself from my experience. Which feels meaningful in its own right.
I hope this story inspires you to become more aware of the moments when you feel tempted to push a part of your experience away. I’d love to hear about your experience with “uncomfortable” feelings, particularly grief. How do you deal with endings and transitions, both major and minor ones? Is it easy for you to express your uncomfortable feelings to others?