Thoughts on Navigating Feelings
Teaching my children to navigate big feelings requires an on-going practice of self-refection. I can not meaningfully teach something that I am not practicing myself.
When my twins were young I fought frequent guilt and anxiety that I wasn’t loving parenting enough. Simultaneously I felt over-the-moon in love with our new babies. Now I recognize how normal it is in the postpartum period to feel overwhelmed, exhausted and deeply grateful in the very same breath. The transitions of early motherhood are complicated. But my 26-year old self didn’t know that. I want to go back in time to give that version of myself a big hug and tell her that it won’t always be quite so hard. I want to tell her to be relentlessly gentle with herself. When babies are born, mothers are also being born. This type of birthing can take time to adjust to.
Our twins were born to us after several years of infertility and a complicated pregnancy which only increased my guilt and complicated feelings. After spending four months in the hospital with them, I knew FULL WELL how lucky I was to have them home with us. That reality was not lost on me and I truly felt deeply grateful for the gift of being their mama. But gratitude and anxiety are not mutually exclusive. That postpartum season began a long road for me of learning to navigate the complexity of holding multiple emotions together in my heart and mind. Motherhood and life are fluid and nuanced and layered.
I have this very distinct memory of sitting in my living room with two screaming newborns. Both of the twins had terrible reflux which meant that after most feedings, the breastmilk that I’d worked so hard to pump for them ended up being spit up all over the nearest person. It was also very painful for them which meant that they’d scream until forever (well, it felt that way). So I had both of my hands occupied with pumping more milk for them and was using each of my feet to rock their two bassinets. They were hollering and I had tears streaming down my cheeks. Two miserable babies plus a crying mama added up to one big hot mess. My husband was gone for a twelve hour shift and I’d slept about 45 minutes all night long. I remember thinking, “THIS is what I’ve been waiting for and hoping for?! THIS is motherhood?! THIS is terrible.” Perspective is always the first thing I lose when exhaustion sets in. And yet, in those moments and days, the feelings of despair are so very real.
I began journaling in a way that didn’t take a real form until years later, but when I look back on my journals from that season I can see the pattern emerging. It has also become a part of how I am teaching my children to navigate their feelings. It takes a three step approach of noticing, naming and deciding if there’s a next step.
The first step of noticing is a simple embodiment practice. I close my eyes and place one hand on my heart and the other on my belly. I wait to see what I NOTICE. Our bodies are always giving us clues about our emotional and mental state. Is my heart racing? Are my thoughts racing? Is my breathing shallow? Years later I am still learning the incredible power of listening to my body. We live in a culture that often separates the body and mind but I think they are interconnected and overlapping both in ways we understand and ways that are beyond us.
The second step is to NAME what I’m feeling. For so long I felt guilty saying out loud some of the parts of what I was feeling. Was I allowed to say how I was ACTUALLY feeling? (The answer is yes!) Would it make me a bad mom? (The answer is no!) It is incredibly powerful to give a name and voice to the things that we feel.
I have been amazed at how vulnerability begets vulnerability. Almost always when I share my feelings with safe people, I am not met with judgement but with a resounding, “ME TOO!” C.S. Lewis said, “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.’” That does not mean that everyone is a safe person. But to share openly with people who have earned the right to hear our true feelings? That is powerful.
The third step is to decide what to do NEXT. Sometimes the answer is NOTHING. It is absolutely okay to just sit with our feelings. Often the next right move is just acknowledgement. Learning to just BE with our feelings or to simply bear witness to the feelings of others can be a gift in and of itself.
Often for me the answer to my “next” question was to move my body. The feeling that was named most often for me in the season of early motherhood was anxiety, so movement felt like the next best step. Yoga and running became non-negotiables in the rhythm of my days and weeks. Sometimes it included my children, sometimes it didn’t. I struggled with feeling selfish for taking that time away from our family time. I also quickly recognized that in order to be the best version of myself, I needed to be brutally honest about what I needed. I had to learn to be honest both with myself and with my husband. I needed him to do the same so that we could support one another. I spoke recently on a podcast about self-care and self-compassion being essential parts of parenthood. You can find that episode here.
As my children have gotten older I have transitioned a lot of these ideas into tools to help them learn to identify and navigate their feelings. I’ve created a unit for kids ages 4-8 all about feelings. It includes and introduction to feelings and discusses the idea that there are no bad feelings. It encourages kids to remember that feelings can change over time (or quickly!) and uses the notice-name-next concept.
To see if this unit is helpful for the kids in your life you can download the first section here for free. The entire unit can be found here.
It is complicated and constant work to reflect on our own feelings while simultaneously helping the kids in our life to do the same. May we be kind to ourselves and to one another as we navigate the ups and downs of life together. It is hard work to pay attention and be present with our feelings but it is worth the work.