So often when things are painful, we try to avoid those feelings at all costs. We can keep ourselves busy or try to numb ourselves out or escape in other ways (food, drugs/alcohol, video games, shopping, work, tv, sex, swiping right, being physically active, whatever it is), all in the hopes of the feelings just going away so we don’t have to feel the pain. The pain is there for a reason and usually it will keep getting louder and louder until we have to deal with it. So what if you stop running from your feelings? What if you just lean into them instead? Embrace them, and look at them for a minute? Let yourself feel them and cry it out? Scream? Go for a drive with the music blaring and the windows down? Spend time in nature and let the sun warm your face and feel the wind in your hair? The only way out is THROUGH. Once you get to the other side of it, it lifts you to a higher place of peace and even joy, sometimes even greater than you could ever imagine. How might you lean in to your feelings? It’s completely normal to have them. It’s not a sign of weakness. To own your feelings is a sign of strength. To feel them and then to express them to others and allow yourself to be vulnerable... This is the stuff that makes us human.