Thursday, April 27, 2017

hiding from the school bus

I was sailing along down the road two mornings ago. Had just dropped off one of my kids at school. I was listening to a book. And thinking about...a TV show. Yep. Nothing deep. Owning that. Suddenly there was a school bus in front of me that I was about to T-bone. I screeched the brakes, pulled to the right, and came to a stop at the curb of the intersection that the bus just galumphed through, unhesitatingly. I don’t think the driver saw me. Or maybe they are trained not to veer because they are the biggest, and a little car like mine would just be squashed.

I pulled into the parking lot on the corner to catch my breath.

I had almost run a stop sign. Into a school bus.

I have been learning for the last while about how you can store emotions in your body, and that they can make you sick, and have been spending considerable focus releasing trapped emotions in an effort to regain my health. I didn’t want these intense negative emotions that I was currently feeling to stick around, so instead of stuffing them down inside, or pushing them away, or numbing out with food or Netflix, I decided to feel them, and let them go.

I breathed deeply. What was I feeling? My heart was pounding with that ‘almost got into a wreck’ feeling. So much Shame, Guilt, Embarrassment. I mean, it was a school bus! I was feeling Anger. At me. Feeling Gratitude. That I didn’t actually hit it. And that my kids weren’t in the car to see their mom do something so stupid. Ah. Hiding. I wanted to hide this and never tell anyone about it.

Hiding is one of my Things. Hiding when the kitchen’s a mess, hiding that I don’t have the energy to do my makeup and hair some days. But, one of the purposes of this blog is to help me stop hiding. Hiding my lack of perfectness. Hiding my insights into behavior and healing. Hiding who I really am. To stop me from slipping away. Into nothingness. So I will at least write this post, even if I never post it.

I let the emotions come up, wash over and through me. I imagined a great hole in my middle that this river of emotions whooshed through. I let myself just sit and feel them. It was uncomfortable. And it was ok that it was uncomfortable. I let myself feel the discomfort. And breathed through it.

I connected with the light. And in my meditation prayed for the emotions to be released. Used my tools of releasing emotions. Sat there for probably 20 minutes. Breathing deeply through all of this. Until I felt a shift in my heart where I had felt such heaviness. So I think I let it go.

I’m feeling a little more heaviness now as I write, so I think I’ll check in with myself again to see if there is more for me to release.

This is exactly the opposite of how I have handled emotions for most of my adult life. I didn’t really have any tools for expressing emotions other than yelling, and I didn’t want to yell at people, so I mostly just stuffed all of my negative emotions down inside my body instead of releasing them, or talking through them. Until they became a great smoldering crockpot of yuck, simmering up on a high shelf I never looked at. I breathed shallowly so that I wouldn’t smell it.

At some point in my life, the shelf broke, and the crockpot came crashing down with all it’s blistering poison. And I finally had to start sorting through the things that were making my body sick. I know what it’s like to have a toxic crockpot.

A little at a time, I’m trying to build new patterns. And be gentle with myself when I revert to the old ones. Sometimes healing comes one step, one almost wreck, at a time.


  1. ❤❤❤ Amy, could you post some of the tools you use to let go of emotions as they come up?

  2. Happy to LIz.

    Find a safe space alone where you won't be interrupted. (I know as mom that is sometimes negotiable. Sometimes I go to my car in the garage if I have no other options.)

    I always start with a meditation of light and a prayer. The meditation is simple. It’s from Christie Marie Sheldon Just think of the light 300 feet above your head and connect to it. Imagine golden white light raining down through the top of your head into your body and down through each part of your body, down through your feet to the center of the earth. Imagine it connecting to the great light that feels like love in the center of the earth, bouncing back up like a trampoline, and back up through your feet into your body, filling you all the way back up to the top of your head. Then imagine a ball of light in your heart that expands bigger and bigger until it’s bigger than the earth. Great. You're connected to the light. After that I center, ground and protect, which I learned from Janet Thurgood. This is simple. To center, I think of a beam of light going through the center of my body. I think of myself sometimes as in a little elevator going down that beam of light starting at the top of my head and down down down until I get to the level of the base of the spine. I mentally anchor in. Then to ground, I think of my feet growing roots that go down into the center of the earth. Then to protect, I imagine creating a semi-permeable bubble around myself, where light and love can go out from me, but any darkness, or other people’s negative emotions just bounce off the bubble and can’t get in. This entire process only takes 2-3 minutes, unless I want to make it longer. It feels really nice and peaceful, and like my heart is filled with light. That’s how I determined it is good .

    One of the easiest light tools for me is also from Christie Marie Sheldon. I start with the short light meditation. I think of the feeling I want to release, notice its heaviness, denseness. I repeat out loud or in my mind, "I delete, de-story, un-create this across all time dimensions space and reality." Or "I clear and transmute this across all time, dimensions, space and reality." I say those words until the feeling changes. The goal is to focus on the feeling and perceive the change. When the feeling changes from heavy and dense to light (as opposed to heavy) and light (as opposed to darkness), you know you are letting go. I say those words until I feel lightness and light in my heart.

    Another one that I like that I created is a LightWrap. I connect with the light. I focus on the feeling. I often feel feelings that need to be released like a tightness or heaviness in my chest. Imagine it as a dense blob of energy. Then imagine taking strands of light and wrap it and wrap it and wrap until its cocooned with layers and layers of light strands, and the heavy feeling starts to resolve. Sometimes I imagine throwing little light bombs at it, like Christie Marie Sheldon suggests. Sometimes, if it is particularly heavy, or dense or hard to move, I lay it at the feet of Jesus.

    Another tool I love is Write and Burn which I learned from Kirk Duncan , and at Brave Girls . I write out all my anger and frustration just like it is in all its rawness without edits. Then I burn it. As I burn it I imagine releasing all the yuck. I love it because it diffuses the emotion. Sometimes I yell or cry when I do this. If you do this one, make sure you take time to put positive back in, so its not just day after day of writing all the negative things. Maybe every other day Write and Burn, and every other day write what is beautiful about your life or what you want to create.

    Those are some that I've used the most. I’m learning a bunch more right now from Janet Thurgood, who is awesome. There are a lot more. Love and light to you, Sister!