Feelings 1

I am beginning to get suggestions from my readers about subjects they want me to write about … this one is from Lisa Kane in Cape Town (she has a list)! OK, Lisa, this is for you! (And as usual, also a reminder for me.)

As the eldest of 8 children, with a mostly stoic father and an accommodating mother, I learned pretty quickly that "bad feelings" were not acceptable. Crying incurred immediate banishment, as did anger (sometimes cemented by a spanking). "Go to your room until you can behave like an adult." (I was five.) Arguments were rare, surrounded by fear.

With that as my background, I assumed that was the Way It Is. So I sublimated my feelings of hurt, anger, fear. Without realizing it, and without meaning to do it, I also sublimated my feelings of joy, gratitude, love. At an instinctive level, I knew that if I let myself go, if I freely expressed my feelings, ANY feeling, I would run the risk of "unacceptable feelings" popping out as well. My prediction was that, if I did have full access to my feelings, it was only a matter of time before I felt something unacceptable, and then I would be shunned (as in olden days, where everyone was forbidden to speak/interact with the shunned one).

It wasn't until the More To Life Weekend, in my mid-30s, that I wanted Freedom to express myself – more than I feared the reprisal. I really didn't want to live the rest of my life curtailed, not fully lived, not fully pressed out (ex-pressed). It took me a couple of more years to realize the full extent of the fear that I had lived with, not knowing it was fear …like a fish not knowing what water is, I didn't know what fear was – I swam in it. (And by the way, looking from the outside, my life didn't look fear-ridden at all – not to others and not to me .. the power of sublimation.)

I want FULL access to ALL my feelings. It's a bit messy at times, but it is organic and real. The best part is that I am *free* – and I get to play my part fully in the Big Scheme of Things.