When loneliness is the doorway.
Loneliness is the doorway to unspoken and as yet unspecified desire.
–David Whyte
Honestly, I kinda thought I had mastered my emotion of loneliness. I thought I could distract myself from it, think beyond it, reason and act and strive through it.
Yeah, a protection had been forged to paint this belief that I was beyond the loneliness that I felt quite often as a child and adolescent, that hollowness in my stomach, that angst in my heart and mind, that feeling that something is wrong with me to feel so lonely.
I know better than to believe I'm beyond this …
So, recently, I was unexpectedly invited to revisit this emotion that holds a long, very long history.
With it, came the obvious realization that I have hardly mastered managing loneliness, nor any other emotional terrain. I’m not supposed to. I’m nudged into its message of healing. Even though I didn’t want to face it, there was an inevitability to this meeting. So I walked with it. I moved with it. I breathed with it. Loneliness had something to show me.
A gift.
It wasn’t blocking me, it was opening a door. And even as I write this, and give it space to arise, I feel it there with me.
So, I thought I would share what supports me moving through this, and other intense emotions, rather than default to distractions… or searching for answers to… or trying to figure out all the nuances, every story, every bit of analysis into why and how I could possibly be feeling x, y, or z...
I...
- remember what makes me feel alive. I honor that knowing. I nourish myself and surround myself deeply with reflections of my heart. Art, Writing, Nature, Conversation (being vulnerable to admit this), Yoga…. And I even reframe my relationship to my feelings and emotions as magical reminders of being so fully alive.
- stay present and breathe with the feeling. I notice it, name it, but most importantly I allow myself to really FEEL it. I find a safe space to breathe and process this feeling, to move it through my body with attention to it, allowing the tears… allowing the flow to move move move it through… and let the breath release its grip- I am not the emotion… it is not me… I feel. .. I get to feel. (You can do this alone, or have a healing practitioner or loving trusted friend witness this for you).
- use mindful meditation and find peace in being a part of the fullness of my sensory experience of the present moment.
- practice self-hypnosis and allow the energy of the emotion to show me its needs and befriend it, allowing it to mirror a deeper need in myself. I don’t need to be fixed. I reinforce the love of myself… meeting myself where I am with the courage to hold and shape and honor the course of change.
Are you looking for support moving through your loneliness, grief, pain, confusion, or angst...?
Facing uncertainty with our emotional state often carries anxiety and excitement, perhaps in the form of fear– and our primitive response to fight, to flee, to freeze or to fawn. It’s normal. It’s natural. But that doesn’t make it easy.
That’s where finding our inner resources of stability, calm and clarity can support us immensely on our journey into the next chapter of our lives- with all the changes we face in career, relationship, creative endeavors, moves, etc. We get this precious life. Let’s live it fully, with joy and honoring our purpose deeply.
Please hear & take this in: You are not alone. Although the feeling (whatever that may be) may run deep, it is not you. YOU are not alone. You are held all the time. Yes. Let’s get you to the place of remembering to REmember.
Loneliness can be a prison, a place from which we look out at a world we cannot inhabit; loneliness can be a bodily ache and a penance, but loneliness fully inhabited also becomes the voice that asks and calls for that great, unknown someone or something else we want to call our own.
Loneliness is the very state that births the courage to continue calling, and when fully lived can undergo its own beautiful reversal, becoming in its consummation, the far horizon that answers back.
–David Whyte
"the courage to continue calling..."
Yes.
You are not alone.
