Love does not Lie - a Rant on Positivity

This might be a wildly unpopular notion, but we have got to stop the positivity trend. We’ve all seen social media posts about staying positive, or have friends urging us to stay positive because others have it much worse than we do. Just this morning I read a post from a mom of two agonizing about how she’s struggling to stay positive. ENOUGH! Here’s my take: love is never going to ask you to lie. 

Love doesn't want you to be dishonest. 

Love is like a vacuum cleaner that is here to draw forth anything unlike Love to the surface to be healed. All of these messages about staying positive are not messages of Love. If you feel sad, feel sad, and if you are grieving, grieve. If you’re tired and weary and worn out from all of this, then feel that. Feel what you’re feeling, and stay in the flow. Don't resist your disappointment, outrage, anger, or frustration. When you do that, it's like trying to shove multiple beach balls under water at once; it doesn't work.

Rejecting your feelings to try to stay positive doesn’t work. What works is to be truly honest about your feelings. Find a safe tribe, people to whom you can say, "Today I feel tired. I can't do any more. I have this list of things to do and all I can do is sit on my swing." I work hard to model that; being a teacher of Self-Love doesn't mean that I don't feel sad, angry, confused, or overwhelmed. I have days that the insidious voices in my head get the better of me. When I feel those things, I Love myself in them. I don't judge myself or make myself bad or wrong under the guise of staying positive, because that would be a lie. Some days will feel positive and some days will feel like shit. That’s the way things are. 

In the same way that seasons change, feelings also change. 

Everything waxes and wanes and flows unless we try to force it to be different. We are part of nature, not apart from nature. When we try to stop the natural order of things, we will fail every time. You aren’t failing if you don’t feel positive all of the time. You’re human. You will fail, though, every time you try to force yourself to feel something that isn’t honestly what you’re feeling. The moment you swallow what you really feel, you abandon yourself. That’s not what Love wants you to do. Love wants you to wrap your arms around yourself and gently say, “I get it. Today is hard, too much, and you feel sad and lonely and over it. I hear you. It will pass and until it does, I won’t leave you. In fact, I won’t leave you ever, because I Love you.”

 If this pandemic is here to teach us anything, it's how to hold each other, how to witness each other, and how to be real with each other. We need to end this exhausting game of pretending to be happy and positive, of trying to please other people to keep ourselves from being judged. That's not Love. Love is honesty. Love says, "I feel vulnerable, and I'm going to tell you the truth anyway."

One of my best friends told me that all she could do yesterday was just rest. She’d had a list of things to do, but, she said, “I didn't get anything done yesterday." I replied, "You got the most important thing done you could do yesterday. You listened to your body, you rested, and you honored yourself." Later, she went outside for a walk and spontaneously started doing yoga. She ended up in a grounding goddess pose and she said, "I started to cry, but it wasn't really like a cry." I said, "You started to wail," and she said, "Yes, and I felt so much better afterwards that I started to sing."

I want you to wail, to lean into what you're feeling and feel it all the way.

If it feels scary, take my hand and choose Love with me. I’ll hold you while you wail, while you sing, while you move from moments of grief to moments of joy to moments of sorrow and back to joy again. The trick is in understanding that we don't have to suffer when we feel what we're feeling. This is so important. Can we Love ourselves enough just to be where we are? Can we Love each other if we’re in joy and if we’re in sadness? Can we hold space for each other?

I spoke with another friend recently who was in a giggly ridiculous mood with her husband, and I was in a totally different space. I was in a hard space. I was in a sad space. I was in a weary space. I looked at her and said, "I Love you. I Love you and your giggly space, and that's not where I am." She said, "I Love you in your sad and downtrodden space, and that's okay."

We don’t have to do this exactly perfectly or in a way that looks neat and tidy. There will be disappointment, there will be sadness, there will be gratitude, and on the heels of gratitude you might immediately then feel like an ingrate. It's all perfect. Let's not pretend to be feeling positive all the time, because that's not the goal. It's not even possible. The goal is Love, and Love is acceptance free from judgment and criticism.

Today, whatever you’re feeling, lean into it. 

If you feel up, feel up, and if you feel down, feel down. When you lean into it, you stay in flow. When you resist it, it will linger. I can't imagine a single person who's really connected to themselves or each other not having moments that just feel like, I can't do it anymore. Moments that say, “I just want to go to the grocery store and buy whatever the hell I want to buy and I don't want them to be out of things and I liked it the way it was and I feel angry today and I'm over it.” I can't imagine that at some point there isn't going to be a moment where every one of us feels like that. I want you to hear that that’s okay. The goal is to be real and to Love yourself in whatever it is you are feeling, moment to moment, to feel the full spectrum of emotions, and to not be afraid of any of them, to not get stuck in any of them, to not feel ashamed of any of them. 

How many of us this week have felt shame because we felt happy? We immediately think about the people that are suffering, and we think, “I shouldn't feel happy.” Yes, feel what you're feeling; Love just wants you to be honest. I encourage you today to ask, "What does Love want me to do today?" Today, Love wants me to tell you to not deny your feelings by trying to be positive all the time.

I Love me right where I am, and that's what allows me to Love you right where you are. 

That is what's real. We can’t pretend and hope to heal this planet. We have to learn how to grieve together, how to collectively hold each other, how to allow it to be okay for us to be feeling different things at the same time. No one is doing it wrong. Everyone is doing this to the best of their ability from the level of consciousness they're at in this moment.

 I've had glorious moments, and I've had moments where my consciousness was nowhere to be found, where I was feeling all the feelings of this horrible earth story. Through it all, I work hard to Love myself in that so that I can have a greater Love for all of you. When we can't feel that Love for ourselves, hopefully someone else has enough to spare and will share it because there is enough to go around. We don’t need to limit or be stingy with our Love, empathy, compassion or understanding. Pretending to be positive right now is not what we need.

Today, dig deeper. Love yourself more. Find someone to be honest with about what you’re really feeling. If you can't find anyone, I'm here. You can message me. You can hit me up right here in the comments. 

Let's be honest. Let's be Love. Let's not be judgment or criticism or condemnation of ourselves or anyone else. Ask yourself, "What would Love have me do today?" If you're feeling low or tired or angry or just over it, Love yourself in that; it will pass faster when you're not in resistance. We don’t have to suffer. When we choose Love, we don't suffer. A body filled with Love doesn’t suffer.

I Love you. Thank you for being here. Have a perfectly honest, beautiful day wherever you are and whatever you're feeling. That's my wish for you.