Being Messy

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Why do some places resonate more than others? Or foods? Or people? But more importantly, why do we question these inclinations?

I was listening to a podcast this morning on my morning walk, which I call “the womb walk” because I start out before the sun rises and over the course of the walk, I experience the sun rising. It is a delicious way to start the day. Depending on the day and my particular emotional state or intellectual curiosity, I will walk in silence and do silent meditation, listen to music, an audiobook or like today-a podcast. Today I was in need of connection and something drew me to Mayim Bialik’s podcast “Breakdown with Mayim Bialik”. I urge you to check it out…

And wow, this morning’s experience taught me to TRUST MY INTUITION as I never had before. Because all the questions swimming in my head and all those sticky feelings of neediness were addressed! Toward the end of the podcast, Bialik and her guest, Jackson Galaxy, shared their experience as empaths. And Bialik, who has an interesting perspective as both a highly sensitive empath and a very intelligent and logical neuroscientist, explained–from both an emotional and neurological point of view–what the hell is going in inside an empath’s brain! And no–we’re not crazy, or weak or too sensitive. There’s nothing wrong with us!

I heard myself in her words, and somehow that made “it” all okay, this “it” that is all that stuff that we judge. Imagine if you could like whatever you like, love whomever you love, want to live wherever you wanted to live, and the whole world would be there nodding its head saying “yep, you go girl!” What if you got affirmation for your sad feelings and happy feelings and gut hunches? What if you could say–nah, I just don’t want to do that, can’t explain why but feels wrong? And the world would be there saying, “yep, you go girl!” But we don’t do that. We say–oh those aren’t lady-like feelings, or that isn’t spiritual, or gosh, I should be more grateful or stop being so lazy and get on with it.

Sometimes it takes having a kindred spirit speak their truth for us to give permission to ourselves to speak our messy nasty uncomfortable inconvenient truth. Bialik spoke her truth, and it all felt ok. And later this morning, I found another kindred spirit, in the opening lines of “Lord Knows”, a poem by Kwame Opoku-Duku:

It gets messy underneath the veil

when the strength it takes to be

can zap the moisture from your skin,

and all you want to be is held to the

breast of a beautiful being and never let go

while the beautiful people sing,

I hope your new soul remains pure!