Emotional Realities

on honoring different levels of emotional reality within myself and others

My head and heart often carry very different states of being than each other.

Heart so eager and passionate, ready for anything.

Mind discerning and cautions, forged from lessons of the past.

Beyond this binary distinction between head and heart. It’s become obvious to me that I contain a multitude of feelings, thoughts, intuitions, hopes, and needs which all deserve to be honored and respected simultaneously.

Within the emotional level alone, I hold truthful feelings that could be perceived to contradict each other.

But how do you honor yourself when you want different things at the same time?

Dance of Discernment

Every day is a fresh start. We wake from sleep different people.

It’s our own mental connection to who we were yesterday, our own attachments, which prevent us from greeting each day with the curiosity and passion it deserves.

We latch onto ideas from our past and let them hold us still, even when life is clearly calling us in new directions. Our ideas of who we are, what we dream of, how we want to spend our time, and who we want to spend it with can all change in time.

Our lives and our hearts call us to new challenges and horizons with each rising sun. Our body is the key to knowing what is most present for us in the moment.

Still, our minds can linger with the challenges of yesterday. They can draw us back to stay stuck in what has no right holding us today.

Or, as often in my case, we can project our energies into the future. Getting lost in wants and hopes and dreams, oh my.

Regardless, this daily challenge of learning to listen and abide by all that our bodies and minds are telling us in the present, is sometimes treacherous.

Especially considering the things we find our bodies, minds, hearts, and souls wanting often seem to stand in direct contradiction of each other.

Where is this feeling or desire coming from?

That’s the question I start with. Then so many others.

Is this my mind? Is this fear? What does my intuition tell me? What does my discernment? My body itself? My heart?

Sometimes I love and hate people simultaneously, repelled and attracted. There’s a push pull going on inside my body.

How do we face such confusion within us?

I only have my own answers to share.

For me, I trust the heart’s wisdom above all else. I know it carries attachments. I know it can be unrealistic. But it also carries within its desires what I consider to be the barest truths about myself.

Still, I don’t act on heart alone. I observe. I witness. At least, that’s the plan.

Discernment is there to balance what is seen within the heart.

When discernment is not manifesting in rigid or pessimistic ways, but unflinchingly honest ones, it can lead us to the promise land of clarity and truth.

We can stand in non-judgement, weighing the needs of the heart against the concerns of the mind. Witnessing when they’re born of fear opposed to truth; when the wants of either party are being steered by avoidance, or addiction, or other false parties that should hold no sway in our decision making.

This calm and rational voice I call discernment can supply us with a balanced, often nuanced, and always wise answer to how we best step forward. Usually somewhere comfortably between two more extreme options which previously existed within our minds.

A path uncovered which honors what our discernment tells us needs consideration. While also following the heart.

This can be hard because the guidance we get from our discernment is often difficult; often a hard truth to swallow.

Sometimes we hear this voice clearly but don’t like it.

It’s not easy to listen when it tells us we need to do hard things.

So, what do we do?

Learning to Say Yes

When my former spouse and I were trying to have a baby, my egg cracked.

For those of you not aware, this term is used in the trans community as a means of expressing when the facade ends internally. The moment a trans person’s egg of self-denial shatters, and the slow journey of breaking free begins.

My egg cracked at 1am on Christmas morning in a bathtub.

I cried there until the water got cold.

It was a really good cry. A part of me screaming to be heard for an unfathomably long time—my entire life—was finally witnessed as what it was; the core to my being and the key truth of my heart’s greatest desires.

Then and there I realized I would have to find a way to step into my transness.

It was a clear choice between stepping forward into truth or returning to blindness and self-denial willingly.

Not really a choice when you see it clear like that.

Before I finally went to bed, I remember sending messages to therapists because I had absolutely no idea how I would even begin to feel strong enough to come out to my spouse. And I remember praying I wouldn’t forget what was so clear to me in this moment. That I wouldn’t fall back into denial out of fear anymore.

A month later I was out to my ex. We still wanted to try for a baby. I knew it was terribly important for me, at 34 years old, to begin transition as soon as possible. But we also felt it was time for us to put up or shut up with having a child. She also wanted to start school. We wanted to host a spiritual retreat in the summer. And more.

We did something crazy.

We said yes to it all.

This is not something I am recommending. This would be the route less discerning.

This was a route which led to chaos. Divine chaos perhaps, but still, it’s not the gentle road most of us would choose to walk towards freedom.

There’s a better way. Where we figure out what’s most important today. And say yes to that. Knowing, that what we want tomorrow may change before we get there.

Sometimes, we just need to listen to all of what our bodies and minds are telling us, and trust the parts which clarity informs are most important and precious. What can wait? What might need to be reconsidered? What cannot be run from? What is here foundationally that needs to be tended to right now? What needs to be honored within myself today, for me and my body?

This is the daily challenge.

To see all that is within us and stand in honor of it. Simultaneously, standing in balance with our most authentic priorities, and with respect to these sometimes-contradictory needs and wants we find existing beside them.

When we do that, we have a chance to then extend that grace to others.

We gift ourselves the ability to abide in honor of the emotional realities which exist within our loved ones, our co-workers, and even the people we meet at the fucking grocery store.

When we stand with discerning balance of all that’s within ourselves, we empower ourselves to share that out with all our people.

Balance Within, Balance Without

Just as we all have these levels of truth within ourselves, each person we love does as well.

To honor all of these realities within every person you meet is an insane task to take on. It can’t be done directly.

There’s literally no way we can do this when we haven’t first found balance within. When we haven’t listened to all our body and spirit has to say, with the proper amount of credence given to each message based on its own worth.

When we’ve done that, however. And we stand in balance with all of ourself. It becomes natural to extend that outward.

We find grace for others exploring this dichotomy on their own. We find the freedom to extend a helping hand without fear of being dragged down, knowing, we have the strength and grounding to instead lift someone up.

We have the discernment to know when our cup is full enough to help, but also, when our cup is bone dry and we can’t serve anyone but ourselves right now.

As with all things, when we do this work within, it extends without.

We can change the world each day, making the lives better of everyone we know, when we stop running from the truths our bodies tell us.

Turning instead to listen. And trusting ourselves to know the way from there.

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