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Strong & Brave
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Photo Credit: Chad Madden
My husband and I were taking down our Christmas tree earlier this month and I was surprised how emotional the experience became for me. Every year, I look forward to Christmas. I love all the lights that brighten the darkest, longest nights of the year. I love the energy and excitement that Christmas brings to our community, the anticipation of get-togethers and larger family meals. I love the deep reds of the poinsettias and of course, the soulful music that fills the air in the stores and restaurants.
What I love the most is how people are kinder to each other in the days leading up to the holidays, wishing each other the best of the season with warm smiles that reach their eyes and tap into the hearts of everyone around them.
But there is also a bittersweet aspect of Christmas and New Years underneath the lovely traditions, and that is the inevitable ending of all this heartfelt sentiment and kindness.
When deep feelings of worry, sadness or anger come up for me like this, I turn to my healing rituals of breath, meditation, movement and talking it out. Deep feelings of sadness can be genuine hallmarks that something is wrong, that someone or something has hurt my feelings. And when I can’t quite place the root of this sadness in my current situation, I look back to my early life.
This past Christmas and New Years were quite lovely. Everyone got along, everyone helped with the food and cleanup, everyone seemed to really enjoy our time together and the small gifts that we exchanged. Where was this sadness coming from?
When I take beat to think about it, I realize that I get the Blues every year after Christmas. There is a part of me that feels so bad about having to take down the decorations and the tree. Every year after Christmas, there is a little girl inside me who wants to curl up in a ball and cry.
When deep emotions hit, I retreat to my breath. I find a lot of relief in Box Breathing, where I inhale-hold-exhale-hold, each to the count of 4. Box breath is a quick little technique that regulates my nervous system and gets me out of victim state in as little as 5 minutes. I also use Circular Breath and my favorite guru to breathe with is the heart-led, record-breaking athlete, Wim Hof. I like to close my eyes and follow the long, circular, continuous inhales and exhales with my Wim Hof Method app. I find the beating of the drum, the music and the sound of Wim’s deep voice very comforting and reassuring to my body.
I like to do at least 5-10 minutes of breath. It always brings my nervous system into a more regulated state from which I can transition into self-inquiry through meditation and prayer. In this space, I ask myself a simple question, like, “where is this sadness coming from?”. I might repeat my question over and over in my mind, almost like a mantra. Sometimes, I spend this time observing an endless stream of thoughts. But with practice, I can find a deeper state of relaxation and sometimes, I gently fall into a tiny gap in my awareness.
It’s not until I land back into the present moment and remember that I am breathing with my eyes closed, that I am even aware that I had fallen into the gap. The gap is an immeasurable amount of space where no time or space seem to exist. It’s not sleep, but its not awake either. It might be a second or two, it might be several, I don’t actually know. But when I come back, I feel like I’ve had a little rest and my brain has had an upgrade. Many times, I get an insight that furthers me along the path of resolution. The source of this little rest and insight seem to come from a place of higher knowledge and wisdom. The insights I receive are often long-ago memories that reveal a link between then and my present, emotionally-triggered state.
I was packing ornaments away in boxes, while my husband pulled the string of lights off the tree and suddenly, I became overcome with sadness, and I broke out into tears. Once the tears started, I began talking out my feelings, a practice that my partner and I have both started doing when feeling overwhelmed.
“I can feel a deep sadness, it is in my chest, in my heart”, I said between breathless moments of deep grief. “It feels like my heart is breaking and there is this dark heaviness in my chest, this kind of inevitable loneliness”.
As I leaned into the dark hole of my grief, I stopped thinking and just started talking out loud. I recalled how lovely my childhood Christmas’s were and how in my youngest years, they were one of the times that I could really relax and feel safe and loved. I am the youngest of five siblings and let’s just say that it wasn’t my mother’s lifelong ambition to be a stay-at-home mom to a large brood of rowdy girls. My father worked out of town a lot in those days and my mother didn’t cultivate the kinds of female relationships that would have resulted in someone coming to help, or someone to be a shoulder for my mother to cry on. There was a lot of resentment and hostility in my family home, a lot of competition between siblings and a lot of autonomy. As a highly sensitive child, I suffered through many lonely experiences and unfortunately, there were no other caring adults for me to turn to for comfort.
At Christmas, I could always count on some really lovely smiles and kind words from my mom in her effort to be joyful. My older sisters were kinder to me and more interested in playing with me, and it felt so good. Our house was full of lively Christmas music and there was always singing, eating and exciting Christmas shows on TV like Santa Claus is Coming To Town. On Christmas morning, my mom always made sure we received thoughtful presents, and she was right there with us, giving us her undivided attention as we unwrapped them (without the TV being on!).
But after the Christmas dinner dishes were done and any family guests had left, a dark cloud would start to form as my mother took her place on the couch, retreating back into her protective shell. By the next morning my mother would be back to her normal self, demanding that we shush so she could hear her radio programs, too busy to tend to the emotional needs of her brood. I get it, being a mother and homemaker is a huge amount of work and she did the best she could in the only way she knew how.
Photo Credit: S&B Vonlanthen
Returning to the present moment as a grown woman of 53, holding a Christmas tree ornament in my hand while weeping like a 5-year old, I found a tiny bit of comfort in more fully understanding the root of my After-Christmas Blues. I have learned that the only way out of my sadness is through it, and I decided to go upstairs to have myself a proper cry. I have found that if I honour this younger part of myself by expressing her feelings and telling her (out load), “I love you and I will always be with you”, that the tears will run their course.
Having self-compassion for these deep emotions during a triggering experience does soothe the ache in my heart. After some practice, I have found that the time it takes to process these emotions becomes shorter and shorter. It’s as if by honouring the feelings of this younger version of myself, she believes less and less like she is the unwanted little girl and instead she feels the love and connection to her grown up self. Me. Us. Together. Wholeness. It’s what makes us Strong and Brave.
This road to Wholeness takes conscious awareness, a strong intention to have more love and joy in our experience of life, and the hard-won establishment of a new response to triggering event – compassion for self. Christmas only comes once a year and I have only been at this intentional self-compassion for a couple of years now, but somehow, I managed to process the After-Christmas Blues in the space of one evening instead of it dragging me under for days. This is a huge improvement over last year, and I am so grateful.
Here is the Strong and Brave strategy for honouring challenging emotions with self-compassion:
#1. Name the Emotion – Gloria Willcox’s Feeling Wheel is a wonderful resource for this.
#2. Describe where the Emotion is in your body. Use as much detail as possible (colour, texture, temperature, sound, symbol), put your hand on it and honour it with compassion (like you would do for a small child). Talk out loud to yourself.
#3. Breathe. Use a slow-paced circular breath or box breathing to regulate your nervous system. Singing, Humming or Toning can also be effective. Movement can be helpful too (e.g. stomping, shaking, dance, walking, running, biking etc.). Keep at it until you feel regulated and more relaxed.
#4. Self-Inquiry. Sit in a quiet space, close your eyes, focus on your breathing, and ask yourself, “where is this _____ coming from?”. With practice, you will start getting some insights. You can also practice inquiry with a loved one or trusted mentor.
#5. Honour your Emotions through Safe, Self-Expression. If you can’t honour them in the moment, make time to honour them as soon as possible.
#6. Self-Care – self-soothing rituals like sitting in the sun, walking in nature, a warm bath, a warm blanket, a hot drink.
#7. Journal and/or Talk about your experience.
#8. Know that You have everything you need inside you to feel and be whole. It is just a matter of finding, acknowledging, embracing, honouring and loving the younger parts of your self.