I’m doing a new (for me) meditation practice of late. I allow myself to feel what I am genuinely feeling and allow it to just be what it is. It’s taking awhile to learn. First it’s been interesting to discover that what I’m thinking at a given moment is a reflection of the feeling and not the feeling itself. Ya, this still doesn’t always make sense but when it does? It really does.

Today I made myself get up at 4:30. I woke up after a crappy night’s sleep with short sleeps accompanied by weird dreams. Yesterday was an emotional day.

Dean has been in KC for work.

It was 80+ and it’s not even March.

Our 45th psychotic and pathological narcissist POTUS dares to believe he’s the Christ belonging on a throne and way too many people in my life agree with him.

My best friend is in a lot of pain from MS and/or something else and I hate it.

Brene Brown says courage and vulnerability are what it takes to show when we can’t control outcomes.

Well…here I am. This is my showing up.

Fear.

Fear is what I feel. Fear is what I am sitting with. The thing is I rarely know it specifically fear. Different from being afraid. Fear is a deeper emotion in my body. One that I’ve been taught shouldn’t be there. Should = shame because the real deal is that it IS in me. It is what I feel and it is because I am alive and human.

I have no problem acknowledging when I’m afraid. That comes naturally. But the fear I don’t want to feel is the force underneath what I do, how I behave and act.

I do things like overly binge watch a British crime series or three. I mean, why not embellish it and find much crazier stuff to compare my life to.

I also do things like move into analysis mode as if I’m working in Army Intelligence. What could go wrong with overthinking things like issues in the HOA that pop up on FB or the latest issue my doctor talked to me about…or…and on it goes.

The challenge to just sit with an emotion and call it what it is without doing a thing to alter it? This, my friends is hard work but as I have done it, it has occurred to me that this emotion of fear will not cease to exist and by pretending that I can rid myself of it, I will likely be more attached to it than I need to be. I am more likely to cope with it in ways that will not serve me all that well.

Sitting with the reality that down in my core I have significant fear isn’t proving to be a myopic dive into darkness. It is instead giving me a sense of relief because it is just part of my real life. I can see that it is a real emotion that doesn’t need to be squashed or fed. All it needs is to be acknowledged.