If You Are Sad And You Know It…Let It Be
Be careful, especially now, about those people who want to try to make you stop feeling what you're feeling. Be careful of those people who want to cajole you out of sadness, who tell you to find the bright side, look for the good in everything.
Grieving is an inevitable part of living. We grieve not only death, but all kinds of loss. We grieve even in the midst of happy occasions. We often think of grieving when someone dies, when a relationship ends, when something bad happens. However, it's common for people to feel grief after graduating from school, getting married, leaving a job for a better one, receiving an award. We grieve what was and wonder about what will be. Grief is normal, natural and helpful. It allows us to process experiences. Grief comes with all kinds of feelings, sorrow, joy, anger, despair, confusion, apathy, fear.
The only way to work with grief in a way that is life sustaining is to feel all the feelings, all of them. Too often, out of their own discomfort, well-meaning friends and family will try to get people to stop grieving. "You know your mother wouldn't want you to be unhappy. Think of all the good things in your life." "You're young, you can have another baby. Focus on that, not the baby you lost." "Just get another dog, that way you won't be sad." "Don't be sad, you don't look pretty when you frown."
Feel your feelings, all of them and know it's okay to feel whatever you feel. I remember a time when I was very young--it was either in nursery school or kindergarten. I felt sad. I don't remember why, but I remember feeling sad. Our teacher had us sing the song, "If you're happy and you know it." Well, the rest of the class sang, "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands," and then dutifully clapped. I remained silent and did not clap. The teacher stopped the song and asked, "Why aren't you singing and clapping?" "I'm sad," I said. "The songs says if you're happy and you know it, clap your hands. I'm not happy so I didn't clap." "Well, you should be happy. You're too young to be sad. You will sing. We're all singing. You don't want to ruin it for everyone else do you?" Lesson learned. I shut up and sang. It didn't make me feel happy.
That teacher taught me, and probably most of the other children in the room, that sadness is bad and should be hidden, that we should pretend we're happy all the time, even if we aren't. It took me a long time to get over that early programming. Unfortunately, our happy, happy, joy, joy culture doesn't support feeling anything but happiness. Sorrow, sadness, anger, fear are demeaned as "negative" emotions that should be avoided, or if not avoided than quickly "processed" and tranformed into joy and happiness. Doing this doesn't actually make people happier, it just makes people feel like failures because they can't be happy all the time. The truth is no one is happy all the time. No one. Nope, not anyone. We all experience a full range of feelings. Yep, you too. You who say, "I don't get angry, it's unproductive." You who say, "I only see the good in the world, I refuse to see the negative," You who say, "I refuse to give in to negative emotions." All of us, every one experiences the full range of emotions. We only get into trouble when we reject our feelings and emotions and try to shove them down, pretend they don't exist, or spend our energy "transforming" them to something more comfortable.
This week, pay attention to how often you try to avoid feeling feelings that are uncomfortable. Pay attention to what you do to avoid feeling. Pay attention to how you feel inside if you share your feelings with another and they try to cajole you out of your feelings. Pay attention to how often you try to get other people to not feel what they're feeling, because you are uncomfortable with their feelings.
