When You Want to Listen to the Sad Song
Lessons from my five year old son.
Mom, why does this song make me feel sad?
A few months ago, we were listening to the Titanic soundtrack as my 5 year old Bruce toiled away on a “life size” cardboard Titanic he's been working on.
The song, Unable to Stay, Unwilling to Leave had been playing for a few minutes & I myself was feeling a great heaviness in my heart and that dull ache in my throat that comes with grief. I looked up at him, our eyes meeting.
You and I are so alike, honey. I was just feeling so much sadness in my body too.
But, why, Mom? How can a song do that?
As I formed the words, my voice faltered & I let the tears slowly fall as I explained.
Music has the power to bring all sorts of feelings to the surface. The way that notes & rhythms are combined can be really powerful like that. This song and what we know about the Titanic stirs up a lot of emotions because it makes us imagine what it was like for those people on the ship while it was sinking. It makes us think about how we’d feel in that situation. Even if we weren’t really there, we can still have big feelings about it.
Bruce’s face changed a million times as I spoke… smiling in relief that he wasn’t alone with his feelings, then a furrowed brow & quivering chin as he surrendered to what had been brought up for him, then a pensive look as he tried to sort out the tragedy of the Titanic itself & what this means about life & death.
Mom? Can you make your voice do that again? When it was shaky while you talked?
I knew that he wanted to hear, see, and feel the depth of my own sadness… to know that when he carries grief in his own body, that it’s okay to let it show.
I spoke again & cried.
He looked at me with such tenderness.
Even though it makes us feel sad, I like this song, Mom. Can we keep listening to it?
Of course we can.
I am still learning how to access my full range of emotions. I dissociated a lot of my life (& still do at times)... sort of floating out of my body & into a dream world to escape really feeling my feelings because they were so intense.
I never liked to share my really deeply felt emotions… the ones charged with loss, anger, or confusion. And especially the ones that didn’t feel like my own… the big feelings that came from empathy, whether seeing a bug die, watching a sad or touching movie, or listening to the story of another person. I carried a certain level of shame and guilt for the intensity of these feelings. They weren’t someone else’s feelings… they were mine… but if my emotions were really big and related to someone else, somewhere inside I held the belief that something about it wasn’t right.
It felt like I didn’t have a right to such strong emotions about something that didn’t “belong” to me.
Now I know that I’m an HSP, empathic, & I’m firm in my belief that our souls are all joined as one, I value my strong feelings. I see them as the true gifts of presence, awareness, and connection that they really are.
To be able to validate & explore Bruce’s sadness & simultaneously feel & heal my own is such a gift. One of those little scraps of magic that I’m always talking about.
Do you give yourself permission to feel your full range of emotions? Do you allow yourself to surrender to what you feel rising in your body? Do you let others in when you’re feeling deeply?
I find that many of the women I work with initially have trouble with this, and it has to do with self trust.
We’ve been conditioned to shut down the messages our body shares with us. To ignore the sometimes slow process of unraveling what our intuition already knows.
The good news?
We can change this.
We can decondition ourselves from the propensity to seek external validation and masculine, linear solutions to our complex inner workings. We can learn to develop a strong relationship with the wisdom of our bodies and bask in the depth of our life experiences.
Where can you start?
Coming into presence with the rise and fall of your belly, the beating of your heart, and the thoughts filtering in and out of your mind is a great place to begin. Being with yourself in full acceptance before seeking to calm and ground. In this way, we witness our truth. We tune into the minutia from our day… the little pieces that have driven us to frustration, fatigue, peace, joy, or anything else. We can feel the raw effect that life has on our wise bodies and minds. From the place of presence and acceptance, then we can move into a place of seeking a remedy and initiating nourishing full belly breaths.
Journaling is another free, simple way to come into closer connection with your wisdom and with Source. Just writing what you’re feeling in a given moment, without the need to drive to find a solution.
EFT (tapping), intuitive dance, or Circling are other ways that I love to process & feel into my soul.
Our feelings and their expression are much like that ice burg that took down the Titanic over 100 years ago.
There’s what we see with the naked eye… just the smallest sliver of the whole piece… something peeking out of the surface. But when you rub up against it… when you get closer, you’re touched with so much more that’s been growing bigger and stronger in the shadowy depths. The colder we keep everything surrounding around it and the less that we invite the light in… the more dangerous everything becomes.
So let’s find ways to melt.
Let’s find the courage to look at what feels daunting.
Let’s be sad when we feel sad and share that sadness with someone we trust.
Let’s bravely show how touched we are when something moves our soul and pulls at our heart.
Let’s follow the example of the 5 year old who asks to hear a quivering voice that’s rooted in love and empathy…the five year old who leans into the magic of feeling life, grief, & gratitude in a sad song and wants to hear it again and again.
photos by Bianca Lea Morra