How To Sit With Your Feelings

In loving memory of Euclide Howard LeLeux, 1928-2019, and Elizabeth May Donnelly LeLeux, 1929-2021

Gather some supplies. These might include: tissues, tea or water, a pillow or a stuffed animal, a blanket. Then sit. Sit anywhere - chair, couch, tree, rock, beach, floor. Take a moment to notice where your body is contacting your surroundings. Your feet, your sitting bones, your back, your hands. Imagine that the chair is holding you, that the tree is supporting you. 

You may or may not be comfortable. 

Now let yourself start to feel, to remember the thing you’ve been trying so hard not to think about. Notice where it starts; the lump in the throat, the twist in the belly. Name the feeling - anger, sadness, rage, despair. 

Realize that the rock or the couch is still supporting you and experience that contact. 

Breathe. Cry. Scream into the pillow. Throw a beach rock into the water. Hug your stuffed animal. 

The floor is still holding you up, reestablish that contact. 

Yell and breathe and throw things. 

Blow your nose, drink some water. Stretch. Be in your body for a few more minutes, even if you don’t want to, and continue to be supported. Consider how you feel: drained, wrung out, empty, surviving. Wrap yourself up in the blanket or hug your tree. Look around at the space you held for yourself. 

You don’t need to be grateful. How can you be grateful for this thing that happened? But you can thank yourself for this time that you had. Maybe you’ll write or make art, or be in this same space with someone else one day. Right now you just have to be who you are.