The Courage to Share it All

I’m reading a book that makes me cry. 

Big, soul drenched tears. 

It does so because it’s about me (and some of you), even when it’s not. 

It’s reminding me why I was indoctrinated to leave my gifts behind. 

It’s reminding me that even as a child I ultimately made the choice to do so, and society didn’t provide another option.

It’s reminding me that as an adult I also have the choice to continue to find my way back. 

Back to the feelings.

The truth. 

The calling. 

Yesterday I felt the weight of society pulling me back down to my formerly assumed identity. 

In these uncertain times I felt compelled to let people know they have permission to feel the melancholy along with the hope. 

For hope will never have it’s true power without truly feeling and experiencing opposite emotions. 

I wanted to highlight the permission because I’m not too proud to admit I had felt melancholy and a whole host of other “negative” emotions this past week. 

When I came full circle to say I had moved through that spectrum of emotion and now felt alive, myself, and hopeful again- 

I was immediately hit with evidence (of my own choosing) that I was wrong. 

Wrong to have felt melancholy in the first place.

Wrong to be a leader telling others it was ok to feel that too. 

Wrong to not just choose to report the end result instead of all the messy middle that was required to get there. 

All of this code and halfway story to tell you this:

Pick up your gifts. 

The world needs you now more than ever to remember who you’ve always been. 

The bright eyed girl who looks at life in her own way, on her own time. 

The one so entrenched in her gifts that she fearlessly dazzles herself with unique brilliance daily. 

The girl who doesn’t even notice the opposition or alternative perspective because she’s so busy being in awe of other people sharing their gifts as boldly and unapologetically as she is. 

The one who puts down the pull to categorize and instead just experiences things for what they are, not what she thinks they mean. 

For no one can assign meaning to anything in another person’s life. 

We can only offer perspective.  Perspective that is colored with our own information, experiences, and reality which may make it entirely irrelevant to the person staring back at you. 

The girl who refuses to look at differing perspectives and decide somewhere deep down that makes her wrong (or right). 

My gift is truth of feeling. 

I Feel. it. All. 

I’m doing my damndest to share that with each of you even when I think I’m being judged or labeled.

Feeling is a spectrum. 

The spectrum does not have good & bad, positive & negative, we actually made that up. 

The spectrum just has variation.

Opposition

Contrast

Beautiful and deep difference. 

My gift is to feel that, all of it, and beg you to do the same. 

Beg you to share that you’re doing the same. 

Because that’s the only way we will no longer categorize emotions, perspectives, and people as right or wrong…. positive or negative. 

We will no longer feel the need to cling desperately to positivity or emotional wreckage because there is a whole lot of emotional spectrum between those two…. 

We will no longer feel ashamed to claim the messy middle. 

THIS is how we will liberate ourselves. 

Liberation that will allow us to teach the next generation of women a new way. 

A way that honors what has innately been there all along. 

In these uncertain times, the world will beg for your liberation.   Another set of eyes are watching you to see how you respond. 

Are you going to give yourself permission to feel and share it all?

Or will you succumb to the societal expectation of choosing only one end of the spectrum?

We can’t possibly know what it is like to live in someone else’s life, and now more than ever it’s time to learn from each other and celebrate anyone who is strong enough to share it all.