Emotional journey

After Chris and I got married last June, I decided I wanted to learn to let go of the various emotional barriers I've built throughout my life. I wanted to fully embrace being a woman, which meant fully accepting my body and my emotions. When I was in high school, I wanted nothing more than to be accepted as "one of the guys." I suppressed a lot of those "girly" feelings teenager girls/young women tend to have. For quite a while, including throughout college, I pretended not to be affected by the difficult or emotionally painful things that happened. I wanted to be strong, but it turns out I didn't understand the definition of strong. What I ended up doing was building a number of emotional walls in order to prevent any pain reaching me. In some cases, I buried the pain so deep that it's taken until now to fully surface it and work through it. This contributed to my bad habit of having good friends for a while and losing touch very quickly afterward - it was a way to forget, to not be reminded of whatever emotional event happened. I found myself doing this even in grad school, pushing away a close friend because being around her reminded me of things that happened in our broader circle of friends.

I knew I didn't want to continue to this pattern. I wanted to build life-long friendships, to grow together. This is something Chris has taught me. When Chris and I started dating, I realized it was ok to be who I really was, that what happened in my past doesn't dictate what happens in my present and future. I learned I can grow from these experiences rather that continuing to hide behind these walls. Sounds easy, but I'm still working it.

In order to continue my journey, I got the book Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom by Christiane Northrup. She walks through creating physical and emotional health from the feminine perspective. Her writing felt like a guide for me to find my own path. A lot of what she wrote spoke to me on a very deep level. It's been a similar experience to when I was visiting a counselor in undergrad, only this time, it has left me feeling more connected not just to myself, but to the female experience. I just finished the book this morning and feel inspired by all of the women who've worked through their own walls and experiences.