Blessing for All Our Emotions | Daybreak Note #196 | January 27, 2021
Untitled | Brianne | 2021
Good morning, dear!
What a year so far. I think we all hoped that simply turning a page on the calendar would transform our lives, but again, months and dates and seconds are revealed to be nothing more than handy numerical inventions, designed to mark but not metamorphose.
With Jan. 6 and Jan. 20 and with the accelerating cases of COVID — at a time when the vaccine is real and here and yet only spinning its magic inside a tiny fraction of us so far — it is hard not to feel, at times, flooded with emotion.
Exquisite joy and hope over the vaccine. Horror and worry over the ceaseless deaths. When I happen upon Facebook, the first posts that pop up — the ones with hundreds of comments — are not the once-typical new baby and engagement photos, but stories of loved ones who have died from COVID.
All of this. And a thousand other feelings for a thousand other reasons.
And yet, we may also be numb. For how long now, have we not hugged our friends? For how long now, have we not entered a shop without a mask, without a tightening in our heart? For how long now, have we not seen our parents, our siblings, our grown children, our cousins timezones away? For how long now, have we not worried about loved ones and the erratic, terrible strike of COVID?
I felt earlier this month a giant cry welling up. It hasn’t come out yet. I joke with friends that it will explode out at the most inopportune time, in the toothpaste aisle or at the gas station pump or in a virtual parent-teacher conference. I’m sensing I need to start processing these emotions, which are just piling up, like the mass rush of boxes mailed at holiday time. I need to start letting them be delivered.
Maybe you do, too?
Here is a Blessing for us both.
With love,
Brianne
Blessing for All Our Emotions
May we allow ourselves to cry,
to mourn all that was lost this year,
to feel the technicolor emotions,
furious reds, melancholy lavenders,
righteous plums, despairs of gold,
rising up in their strengths and strains,
in ways that surprise, satisfy,
dismay, and overwhelm us.
May we feel them all wholly,
resisting the common habit
of avoiding them, ignoring them,
compartmentalizing them
into a socket of our bodies to stew.
Instead, in this uncommon time,
may we allow them to freely bubble up
gasp into the air and light,
and be seen, felt, acknowledged anew.
May feeling it all as it comes,
in any order and at any time,
help us to emerge again,
on the other side of this pandemic,
help us to reclaim the life
within us, the life still throbbing
and aching and dancing
in the dim but rising light.