How does emotional pain process in the body?

When I got the news that my dad died at 19, I was in a state of shock. I remember hearing the words, life slowing down and then everything going dark. I think I passed out on my sister. When I came to, I was numb. It was a Sunday and I went to school the next day. When I told my teachers what was going on, they were surprised I was even there and gave their condolences. My English professor told me to punch a pillow.

Punch a pillow? I was hurt that he would even suggest a thing. What would that accomplish? I came home from school that day and retreated to my bedroom. I was staring down one of the pillows on my bed for an uncomfortable amount of time before I landed my first hit. I felt stupid at first but kept going. By the end of my boxing session, I was sobbing and exhausted. It was the first time I cried since hearing about my dad.

Sometimes our emotional pain gets stuck in our body and we need movement to help it along. Punching a pillow was the method that served me in a way I couldn’t have imagined. It got my grief journey started.

This is my dad’s robe. My mom started to wear it after he passed and it was the one thing I took from her after she died (lies, I have her leg warmers too). It’s so cozy and feels like I’m wearing a hug.

I loved my parents while they were here on this earth and I love them just as much now, wherever they are in the universe. As i get older, I have more empathy for who they were as people, and am able to reconcile the times when their parenting fell short.

My forever life work is getting curious with myself: the thoughts/behavior patterns that live in my subconscious that were born when I was a child. When these things go unchecked, even the things I think I have control over are really being driven by neural pathways that were created when I was a kid.

My mom and dad did the best they could with what they had. I have the opportunity to heal, change and create new ways of thinking and being that will serve me, my communities, my clients and those that come after me. All it takes is one to change the paradigm and I am more than okay being that in my family and doing it one day at a time in the familial robe.

I got into a fight with Ashlee Simpson.

Ashlee Simpson was on the cover of Marie Claire magazine in the mid 2000’s. In the mag she went on to talk about individuality, embracing being unique and being confident in the person you are right now. Shortly after her interview went to press, she got a nose job.

People, including myself, were like wtf Ashlee Simpson and Marie Claire? How can a person promote one thing and then do something that completely goes against that thing?

Simple: Humans are walking contradictions.

I felt a kinship with Ashlee. She was preaching these words of self-compassion and esteem to my insecure funky nose heart. Was I really upset that she got a nose job? No. I was upset that she went on this global platform preaching the importance of self acceptance and love when she didn’t really feel that way. The thing is self love and self acceptance are born from a place of feeling the counter. We are born in bliss and are blank canvases. We learn a lot of shit that’s not true and live our life according to these non-truths. We have coping mechanisms to numb us out from what’s really an illusion. It’s fucked up.

Ashlee Simpson was living a public life. I can’t imagine how much shit she got (from people who don’t even know her) for her imperfect nose. How she must have felt to have chosen to break her body in order to shape it into someone else’s ideal of what is beautiful. The compassion that I now have for myself, I am able to give to someone like her. I understand and embrace the contradiction.

Dear Ashlee Simpson, I hope you are able to breathe better than ever and that you smell all the possibilities.