MY WORD OF THE YEAR WAS COURAGE. WHAT TOOK COURAGE THIS MONTH?
No one prepares you for when a close friend dies suddenly. I didn't need to search hard for what gave me Courage in March — my fear of losing someone close was realized and it threw me into a tailspin. Courage was what helped me find self-compassion to sit with the big heavy feelings and know I could make it through.
It's been difficult to talk about online. It is still very new, personal, and raw for me. I posted only one skating reel from the day after I found out about my friend's death. I was heavily grieving and almost had to force myself to put on skates, but I knew skating and being outdoors would help me begin to process everything.
That was the last time I skated because I must have gone too rough or didn't warm up enough because for the following weeks, I had an aching pain in the arch of my left foot. It’s also been hard to find the energy. Grief is exhausting — another thing I wasn’t prepared for.
When I think of courage, initially I picture this large, ferocious lion-like emotion. But the courage I felt in March while grieving was a more gentle version — it was the courage to give myself the grace I needed to get through these big, powerful emotions and somehow keep going on with life.
I would find myself wanting to sink further into my couch and watch another rerun of “Is It Cake?” (a delicious escape that goes down easy after a long day) or a soothingly familiar '80s sitcom (currently binging "Designing Women" on Hulu). Or I would throw myself into Mom Mode and allow my kids to distract me as much as they wanted.
What took Courage was actually pressing myself forward to do things I wanted for myself and in my business. Whenever the overwhelm of my work felt like it was drowning me in anxiety, I began using the phrase "Chip away" to at least take one step toward getting my stuff done. Those were the moments I would set timers and use the Pomodoro Method to get through a few hours of work before my eyes would be so dry and puffy from crying that I’d have to call it quits for the day.
I had a few instances where my head was obviously somewhere else when it shouldn't have been. Having understanding clients has been an immeasurable relief and I'm grateful not to be in a corporate environment where grieving is only recognized for immediate family.
I’m slowly feeling like there’s more space between the dark moments as time goes on, and there’s a new bond within our circle of friends right now that is both painful but also comforting that we were able to see one another’s faces again at the funeral.
I'm currently reading "Radical Acceptance" by Tara Brach, Ph.D., and it's really helped me deal with a lot of these harder emotions. It's also helped me be more comfortable feeling my feels, rather than the habit I grew up with of stuffing them down and dealing with them when they eventually explode.
As my Nana was dying of liver cancer, she was reading a lot of Louise Hay and passing on some of the information to me. One of the things she had read about and lamented was that she taught herself from a young age not to cry and to hold it in. She was the first person to tell me how emotions, if not dealt with, can be stored in the body and affect us, physically and mentally.
But these emotions can be hard and scary. And I'm grateful to be able to tap into that compassionate courage and exercise that muscle this month.
Courage in 2022
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