Permission to Feel

To say the year 2020 has been off to a rough start is probably an understatement.It's been hard.It's been challenging.It's brought on new challenges.It's brought to light issues that have been hidden.We're all feeling it.The weight of this world. The sadness. The hurt.With this blog post today I have it on my heart to give you permission to feel. You have permission to slow down. To be silent. To look inward. To challenge what it is your emotions are sharing with you. You have permission to do or not do something, say or not say something, post or not post something. It's ok to take some time to process on your own time and share if you feel led.I woke up the other morning to a lot of black squares on social media (you probably did too). I had the instant feeling that I should post a black square, too. But the thought came from this place, initially, of wanting to follow everyone else and what they were doing.I challenged this thought, though, and came to the realization that I don't want to just participate in something on social media only because everyone else is. I want to, and felt I needed to, take time to reflect on the news we've all gotten, on the things going on in our world right now. I scrolled through some posts, read from a variety of different accounts, visited some trusted news sites and blog sites speaking on the issues at hand to try and gain some perspective to help me know what it is I'm feeling.This is a practice I've not always been good at. I've not always been good at tapping into my feelings about certain things. It's sometimes so much easier to just graze by those feelings as they surface and then push them back down. It's easier to just post something because that's what everyone else is posting instead of taking time to feel for yourself and decide how you want to participate and take a stand.So I encourage you to feel here. Let yourself do whatever it is you need to do to really tap into your emotions and your feelings. Do you need to back off from social media and the news? Do you need to spend some time in stillness? Maybe you pull out your journal and just be open to what spills out on the pages.Give yourself space right now.