From Despair to Love: Navigating Difficult Emotions

Over the weekend I felt a great amount of despair and hopelessness over the human condition. It seems like no matter how hard we try to make things better, they are getting worse. I found it hard to get myself out of bed, and spent several hours in the middle of the day laying there, curled up in the fetal position, witnessing my thoughts: “Nothing matters. It will never change. It’s hopeless. What’s the point?”

There is a lot happening in the world. Many of the mothers I work with have expressed feeling deep sadness, grief, and pain over current events. They are feeling a lot of fear about the world that they have brought their children into, and about what the future will bring.

Alan Watts said, “There will always be suffering. But we must not suffer over the suffering.”

So what do we do instead?

In the past, I avoided more difficult feelings as much as possible. I turned to alcohol, food, shopping, TV or social media to numb myself. I looked to blame my feelings on other people and their actions. I tried to understand or take action to change things so that I could feel better. Ultimately, none of these things worked.

Now that I’ve been on a journey of healing and well-being for the past 9 years, my process has evolved, and I have a new perspective on difficult and painful emotions:

1) The only way out is through. It is important to feel what I’m feeling and not spiritually bypass the feeling, repress it, or reason my way out of it. This too shall pass. An emotion is a physiological experience in the human body that only lasts about 90-seconds from start to finish when we allow ourselves to feel it AS A BODY SENSATION fully. Practicing mindfulness, presence, and bringing consciousness to the feelings in my body vs. letting my mind take over is the key to letting it pass, and letting it go.

2) Whenever possible, I find ways to cultivate, feel, and generate emotions of love, compassion, acceptance and courage. Love is the greatest power in the world, and if I can send love and kindness to myself and to all human beings on the planet, I can find happiness no matter what circumstances are going on around me.

3) I can’t be of service if I am wallowing in my own misery and despair. Courage is the first stepping stone out of lower-energy emotions such as fear, hopelessness, pain, anger and resentment. If I can access courage - courage to tell the truth, courage to be vulnerable, courage to have hope, courage to get out of bed - then I am on my way out of despair. (BTW - there are real scientific underpinnings to this idea of stepping your way out of lower level emotions into higher level emotions - David Hawkins’ Map of Consciousness is a brilliant body of work that explains this. More to come on this later.)

Speaking of courage, I love this quote from Gilda Radner: “Motherhood is the biggest gamble in the world. It is the glorious life force. It‘s huge and scary - it‘s an act of infinite optimism.”

I truly believe this. Bringing a child into this world is a courageous and bold act of optimism - it is a stand that things can be better. Thank you for being one of those women who has embodied that courage and optimism and created hope for a better future for our world.

And thank you for being someone who I feel called to contribute to. On Sunday, I got myself out of bed by telling myself that I couldn’t be of service to mothers if I was stuck in hopelessness and despair. I feel so much love for you and your journey and that is a gift to me.