Good self-care practices create space for grief (and other emotions)
Earlier in my career, before I had established solid self-care practices, I didn’t feel a lot of emotions. “Frantic” is the best label for my lifestyle at the time – frantically working on getting tenure, stuffing the rest of my life into whatever space I could.
I was literally “too busy” to create space to feel.
The only thing I did feel – because it was “loud” enough to bust through my franticness – was anxiety.
Emotions are really, really important.
Feeling our emotions is part of living a full life.
All emotions are part of being human, even the negative ones.
Good, solid self-care practices allow us to make space for a full range of emotions.
In turn, feeling a full range of emotions is healthy – even when it hurts.
Now that I have established (but not perfect) self-care practices, I feel my emotions.
I am what, in my family, we call a “Big Emotions” person: All my emotions are intense.
Part of my past avoidance was due to fear. Now that my self-care is better, not only do I have space for my emotions, but I also have learned to welcome them, knowing they are vital for me to honour.
Self-care allows us to feel our emotions, and it is an act of self-care to feel them.
I planned to write a post about Labour Day today, not emotions. But today, my heart is heavy with grief for James Smith Cree Nation. My heart worries about the first responders and health care workers we rely on in a system stretched much too thin.
I struggled to decide if I should even mention this tragedy. In no way is this post meant to imply that grief and tragedy present an “opportunity” for self-care. Nor is this event a “lesson” for us to use to reflect on or improve our self-care.
Instead, my post is based on my observation of how deep my heart feels today and knowing that ten years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to make space for it.
My overall message is this: we must create space for our emotions to be able to care for ourselves, our loved ones, and our communities.
In self-care solidarity,
