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“When we learn to hold both, we expand our capacity to feel.”
In this episode, I’m talking about the power of holding all of life’s duality and how that allows us to heal, grow, and experience the richness of expansive states. I call this the place of both because it’s about making room for seemingly contradictory emotions to exist simultaneously without one negating the other. This is especially important when working to heal from trauma because it’s often difficult to make sense of the challenging and harmful aspects of another’s personality (or a specific situation or environment) when good is also present. I’ll be sharing some relevant examples from my own life and healing and giving you tools to expand your capacity for holding the totality of this messy human experience.
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What to listen for:
- The experience of grief and gratitude is a common one
- How my own words weren’t supportive in the depths of loss
- Going deeper into healing and expanding my knowledge
- Not everything happens for a divine reason; some things are human
- Acknowledging the human element of life
“Every time I feel gratitude for what I know, where I am, who I get to meet and be in relationship with, and what’s been birthed in my work and business, I feel grief. I feel grief because he’s not here, and he died. And I feel grief for the person that I was, the business that I had, the relationships that I had, the life that I was living, all of which stopped existing when he made the choice to leave. It’s both.”
- Having a relationship with the seemingly contradictory
- Favoring emotions that are “socially acceptable”
- It’s true that we learn to carry grief differently over time
- All emotions must be welcomed and felt
“Both are real, both are welcome, both are healthy. Both can coexist and when we learn to hold both, we expand our capacity to feel, be, believe, dream, love, and grieve—all of it. We expand our capacity for emotion, and all of the emotions become richer. We get stronger with them, better able to work with them.”
- Owning my full experience in an abusive relationship
- Everyone and everything in this life is multifaceted.
- We can’t cancel out the contractive in favor of what’s expansive
- Understanding which no-go-zone emotions you avoid
- Our experiences don’t negate anyone else’s, and vice versa