riding the waves - methods shifting and taking in all the beautiful colors/emotions of the canvas that teach and support me - each soul a unique pallet and one of a kind work of art! Module 4 (half way thru) 🌊🏄🏻‍♂️

I want to take a minute to say thank you to everyone who has reached out, checked on me, sent love, offered support, or just quietly held me from a distance. I haven’t had the capacity to respond to every message in the way I normally would, so please bear with me. I’m reading them. I’m feeling them. And they matter more than you probably know. Yesterday I went shoe shopping with a girlfriend and could not find one pair that felt good on my feet. Such a small thing, but suddenly it was just too much. She looked at me and said, “It’s going to be okay. It’s just shoes.” And I needed that. Not because the shoes were the problem, but because sometimes something tiny is where all the overwhelm finally shows itself. Holding space for other people as they’ve moved through hard things has been such an honor in my life, and I think knowing what that has meant for me has made it easier to let other people hold space for me now. I don’t have to explain every detail or keep going back into the whole story in order to feel what I’m feeling. Sometimes I can name what is here, stay with the emotion, and let it move without feeding it with every detail of what happened. Sometimes I still get pulled back into the story because the urge is strong and the feelings are real. But I can notice it now. I can come back. I can let someone sit beside me without needing them to fix it or make it make sense. And to those of you who have told me that my work has gotten you through some really challenging moments, I keep thinking about that too. You’re right. It is powerful work, and right now I am so incredibly grateful that I have it. In so many ways, the life I’ve been living has felt like a fairytale. Not because it was perfect, but because it was a life I once could hardly have imagined for myself. Love, adventure, home, community, travel, possibility. A life we created together that felt really special to me. And now that story has taken a very hard turn. Was it real? Yes. Was it beautiful? Yes. Am I grateful for it? Absolutely.

I want to say something about my absence here lately. Please don’t take my quiet or lack of participation as me stepping away from this work. The truth is, I’m living it. In a way I never would have chosen and in a way that has asked me to use almost everything I’ve created. Emotional Surfing was never meant to be something I taught from a distance. It came from my own life, my own mess, my own learning how to stay with what I feel without letting it take over the whole story. And right now, thank God I have this work. It has been a lifesaver for me. Not because it has made any of this easy. It hasn’t. But it has helped me recognize when I’m feeding a feeling instead of feeling it. It has helped me notice when I’m looping. It has helped me make space for grief, anger, disgust, fear, love, and even possibility without asking any one of them to decide what happens next. I’m finding my way through something deeply personal and life changing, and for now, that means I have less to give outwardly. But I haven’t left the work. I’m in it.

We tend to think of practice as something intentional. Practicing balance. Practicing meditation. Practicing naming emotions. But we’re practicing all day long, whether we realize it or not. If I repeatedly avoid an emotion, I’m practicing avoidance. If I feed the story every time anger shows up, I’m practicing feeding. If I override my capacity, I’m practicing overriding myself. If I immediately react when I feel uncomfortable, I’m practicing reaction. And yep, I can get really freaking good at all of those. If I keep waiting until I have more time, more capacity, the right mood, or life settles down before I practice something different, I’m strengthening that pattern too. The wave comes. Can I notice the sensation before I explain it? Can I name the emotion without immediately believing the story attached to it? Can I notice whether I’m feeling it, feeding it, dismissing it, or suppressing it? Can I check my actual capacity instead of the capacity I think I’m supposed to have? Can I create one tiny bit of space between what I feel and what I do next? That’s practice. If you’re curious about learning to ride the waves of emotion rather than getting pulled under by them, that’s what I’m exploring with Emotional Surfing: Riding the Waves of Emotion. Comment wave

To know what self love is versus to know in your body what it feels like