It’s Stacy Rocklein, and this is My Vulnerability Project.
I want to share something that happened to me yesterday. I had a very emotional day yesterday. What do I mean when I say emotional day? Every day is an emotional day. We’re humans. That’s what we do. We experience emotions. What I mean are emotions that are rare for me.
I had known for several weeks, maybe longer, that my heart was heavy. I can tell that, because I have chest pains. I recognize that my heart is blocked when that happens. What that always means for me is that I am withholding love for myself. That’s what generally gets my heart blocked.
Finally yesterday, I was confronted with that reality and needed to deal with it and try to get it unblocked. I got some help with that. But that also resulted in a lot of emotion, a lot of energy release, and a lot of tears. And tears are not my jam. I don’t cry that much. If I am watching movies or commercials or listening to the Star-Spangled Banner, yes. But generally in life, I don’t have a lot of tears. I don’t allow myself to settle into things that produce tears, I guess. Emotions that produce tears.
So when I do, it’s always a little different for me. And a good sign that I’m releasing some energy that needs to come out. But in the process of doing this and confronting the reality that I’d been withholding self-love, I suddenly saw two paths before me and I had to choose one.
One was an old pattern that looks like this. Thinking of myself as a little girl…
“This little girl needs love. All people need love. How could I withhold that from her. That’s cruel. How could we leave her behind? It’s so sad.”
That path is funny because you’re judging yourself for judging yourself and withholding love because you withheld love. It’s so important to me to love myself. It’s my big mission in this human existence to embrace that fully and accept myself fully, because then I’ve really silenced my ego and I get to step into the FULL who I am.
The other path was just compassion. A path of scooping up that little girl and acknowledging that she does need love like we all do and going forward. We can choose love and we can choose compassion. There doesn’t even need to be forgiveness, because that is the past. Just compassion going forward and choosing that path, still allowing the tears to come and the energy to be released. And to feel that compassion instead of judgement and sadness.
That’s what I chose and it felt good. It felt good to release that energy and also be in a place of love and compassion and non-judgement.
So that was my yesterday. I’m sure you go through experiences like that where you’ve got to confront moments when you haven’t been holding yourself in a loving place. I understand that feeling. Try to hold yourself with compassion as you go forward through those moments.