Allowing Ourselves to Feel

As the weekend approached, I felt myself slipping into a funk that mimicked previous bouts of depression—except I couldn’t put my finger on a cause. I was sad. I was tired. I was defeated. After spending the day conquered and unmotivated, I took note of the date. It was the anniversary of my parents’ deaths. I’d been aware the day was coming up, but I wasn’t prepared for how it would affect me. I hadn’t been dreading the day, but apparently my heart had been busy preparing for it.

For years I’ve helped others through their grief—saying the right things, honoring a space for silence, and meeting practical needs. Those are the things I know to do, along with listening to stories about lost loved ones. Much of it comes from the amount of loss I’ve had over the years. Very little prepares you for the loss of a parent.

Only a few years ago I was talking to a friend about loss and grief. Her mother passed away when she was just five years old. For most of her life she’d found herself overwhelmed with sadness every time the month of her mother’s death rolled around. Then in her adulthood, her husband comforted her with this phrase: Your heart remembers. It was wonderful for her to know that our soul understands even when we aren’t fully aware.

At the time of my father’s death, my family was in intense turmoil, more than my husband and I had ever experienced during our twenty-six years of marriage. Circumstances swirled around us in a tornado of emotions. The enormous losses we were walking through would have caused us to feel defeat just by themselves. Multiple losses and stressors felt crushing at times. I had little time to grieve my father’s death as loss after loss piled up. Later, it became apparent that I’d held grief under the surface for months. Only when I started unpacking each loss individually did I feel as if my healing could begin.

Moving through loss, especially death, is a precarious business. It’s never the same because not only is each person different, but each loss is unique. Acknowledging where you are with every step helps the strengthening process. Perhaps it has more to do with our own experience with loss. I suppose it should be a normal process, but upbringing and beliefs about death will always influence how we approach our emotions.

I was raised to believe that crying, sadness, and any emotion other than happiness were negative. Emotions were to be suppressed if they made other people feel bad. When I was nineteen, a close friend was in a car crash. I was in the room with the family when they made the decision to disconnect life support. A trusted family member took me outside for a walk, admonishing me to cry my tears out there because I wasn’t to cry once I walked back into the hospital. It was my job to be strong for the family. While this admonishment was well intentioned, the idea that tears are a sign of weakness is as wrong as it was damaging. For the next year I refused to cry. Bottling up my emotions led to severe depression, and eventually, a breakdown of sorts. I was as far away from being strong as I’ve ever been.

Emotions are an integral part of who we are. Like the nerves in our body that tell us we’re touching something hot or physical pain that tells us we’ve injured ourselves, feelings aren’t good or bad; they’re just identifiers. They signal that something is happening in our lives. When something good is happening, we feel happy, and we feel sadness when loss touches our hearts. My family didn’t seem to understand my crying through movies when I was a child, but I believe I was created to experience empathy and tenderness. When that was suppressed, my ability to cope changed. Being emotionally numb can be as concerning as physical numbness. Paying attention to what we feel can help us avoid emotional injury.

We often develop habits to avoid feelings. In my early twenties I was treated for an eating disorder. I spent several months as an inpatient, trying to get a handle on taking out my aggressions on food, either by binging or by restricting to assume control in my life. It was a result of my need to control my emotions. The cycle of trying to hide from your own heart can be vicious. Procrastination has also been a favorite place to hide. Putting off responsibilities keeps me from facing facts tied to sadness or grief, yet hiding from reality only delays the inevitable. It doesn’t eliminate it.

Once I began to peel away what kept me numb, the pendulum swung in the other direction as far as it could. My emotions were hard to control and easier to follow. I had little balance for quite some time, which made navigating mature decisions even more difficult. From relationships to living situations and employment, I was a bit of a mess. Not until I truly began to understand that the God I had followed all my life was more interested in a relationship with me than in the perfection I tried to achieve was I able to make progress. He not only knew my feelings; he created them. He also would give me wisdom if I would just ask.

When we faced the pain of a broken adoption, my friend gave me the most beautiful encouragement: “Allow yourself to just be sad,” she said. When the world isn’t kind or understanding, when you don’t want to explain your sorrow to one more person, it’s okay to walk through your emotions. Let the tears flow and the laughter spill out. Let your emotions speak your heart in ways words can’t. Your tears all have a reason, and maybe it’s just to point you in the direction of peace.

That weekend I made space to be sad. I didn’t wallow or shirk my responsibilities, but I did give myself permission to feel. I made sure that the rest of me knew what my heart knew. No two people grieve the same, and we may not experience all the stages of grief. Some moments seem brutal, and others remind us of our joy. I believe we grieve as deeply as we love, and the love for my parents still runs deep. My heart realizes it, too, and slowing down to listen to it was truly the best way to follow my heart.

Jemelene Wilson is a passionate storyteller who writes of faith, hope, love, and food. She’s madly in love with her pastor husband and mama bear to two daughters. Grace is a fairly new concept she is exploring with her life and words. Mama Jem believes we should live gently and love passionately. You can find more of her writing at jemelene.com.

Photograph © Ernest Brillo, used with permission