No Feeling is Final
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No Feeling is Final

15 Jun No Feeling is Final

Posted at 23:00h in Uncategorized by

My daughter Ella disliked my recent blog about the quail. Strongly disliked. She was already upset because of the actual event (discovering the baby quail were eaten by a hawk) and she could not fathom why I would add to the sadness by choosing to revisit this atrocious memory and solidify the event in written form. Her sadness bordered on anger. 

She came into my home office the morning that blog post was published to tell me she would unsubscribe from Leading with Heart if I ever wrote something so depressing again. “I’m serious. I know right where that unsubscribe button is,” she added with a stern voice, making sure I understood my readership was at stake.

For the next few days, Ella actively pushed against the sadness, avoiding anything that might allow the painful thoughts of the baby quail and the associated feelings to bubble up again. When I would start to tell a story, she would interject to ask, “Does this have a happy ending… or is it like the quail?” If there was a promise of nothing sad, she nodded for me to continue. 

Avoiding difficult emotions is comforting in the moment. Yet, when we push the emotion down, it can more easily bring us down with it. 

I talked with Ella and explained that knowing how to understand feelings and use them wisely helps us learn to cope with emotions and find a way forward. We talked about the big feelings she was having and discussed where she felt the sadness (her heart) and what it was telling her (it hurts to think about the quail parents missing their babies and wondering where they are). 

Feelings are information. 
Let them happen. 
Live in them. 
Look at them. 
Feel them. 

I gave her a big hug and shared with her the beautiful words Rainer Maria Rilke wrote about accepting and moving through the highs and lows of our emotions. Rilke’s words have always comforted me when life feels punctured by heavy feelings. I’ll share them with you as well, hoping that it brings you comfort through the story of the quail and other hard times, too:

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. 
Just keep going.
No feeling is final.