I am standing in the feeling of feeling.
#18 On Being Moved 🧡
June 2025
It is July 7th. Already.
I come to this month’s On Being Moved not quite knowing what June was, or what it meant. And I come with the thought that I am not sure if I am even up for writing anything at all.
Nothing to say.
This note was already waiting for me though, written and saved in my drafts.
From my journal
Wednesday, June 4, 2025
I am tired.
Tiredness with a consciousness. Not exhaustion, not just fatigue. No reset. My body does not feel like mine. It feels difficult to describe. I am standing in the feeling of feeling.
Reading this now, it makes sense. As if I already knew. As if June had already started to speak, quietly, from ahead.
I am standing in the feeling of feeling.
I often forget to ask how I actually feel. It is a recurring theme (you might have noticed). And when I do pause long enough to ask, what rises is usually too much. I often end up feeling silly for even trying. Not all feelings need to be explained or named, but gradually, over these last few years, I stopped staying with them at all. I began to turn away. Like my inner voice telling me, what is the point anyway…
Right now, I find myself caught in between - drifting between moments of numbness and whatever lives on the spectrum towards the other end.
— When you look up the opposite of numbness, one of the words that comes up is empathy.
Empathy has not been absent though. In fact, it has been very much part of the numbness. It is what has pulled me away from my own emotions. A quiet abandonment of my own inner world.
Apathy, not from disconnection, but from overload. For me, it shows up as what I have come to call living in loops, circling around the things I deeply want to focus on, but rarely settling into them. There is always something else. And more often than not, it is something I began long ago and never quite finished, resurfacing later, right in the middle of something new that I started.
Beneath it all, a sense of wrongness creeps in. Especially when I attempt to do the things I currently enjoy most: writing, reading, exploring the ideas that have been tucked away inside my mind for so long.
Like I am doing something I should not.
It is unfamiliar, this space.
And so, the loop starts again. A lovely little cycle of incompletion. Sigh.
Right now, I am trying to unlearn it. To soften the edges of that inner judgment. To notice the frustration when it appears, and to gently remind myself: There is nothing wrong with being exactly where I am.
It will become familiar, this space.
I am standing in the feeling of feeling.
And I thought I would share a moment that felt like a release. A reset. Tears. Unexpected, unplanned. Slightly uncomfortable as well.
I found myself in front of the above pictured painting Today (1999) by Mauri Kuitula, currently exhibited at the Helsinki Art Museum (HAM). It made me stop. It allowed me to stand still, to be held by my partner who simply let me feel what I was feeling. Someone beside me. No fixing, no questions. Presence.
“I’m sad but I’m not lonely.”
A flood of thoughts came together in that moment. Not only about the life I am living, but about the lives of others, those near to me and those unknown. The tears that came were not just from sadness. They were also tears of hope. Hope that even in the most unimaginable circumstances, no one is truly alone. That somewhere, somehow, someone stands beside you. It might sound naive, but it is a belief that still feels deeply human, and deeply necessary.
I hold tightly to the hope that one day we might find ways to resolve conflicts, whether between nations, communities, or individuals, differently. Conversations that leave no casualties, disagreements that do not strip away our shared humanity.
The human heart is the first home of democracy. It is where we embrace our questions. Can we be equitable? Can we be generous? Can we listen with our whole beings, not just our minds, and offer our attention rather than our opinions? - Terry Tempest Williams
Slowly, it is beginning to feel less wrong to write down what usually spins around in my mind. And yes, it still feels a little strange to share these thoughts out loud. But somehow, nothing turned into something.
I want to stay open to the world around me, not shut down or turn away.
I want to engage. And I want to find ways to nurture that openness, to tend to these thoughts gently, and to notice when it all begins to tip into overload.
I am standing in the feeling of feeling.
'On Being Moved’ is a monthly series of exploring and expressing observations and thoughts - through both written and visual formats. Not sure yet of its direction, however each step forward is a step 'on being moved'. Welcome ♥
I was going to say the only way through feelings all the feelings is “through”. But you said it more beautifully, as always, “I want to stay open to the world around me, not shut down or turn away.
I want to engage. And I want to find ways to nurture that openness..”
I am here to help that journey in whatever capacity you need me to. Love you ♥️
Thank you for sharing this insight into your feelings! <3