A few weeks ago, I wrote that deconstruction has been the driving force for how I show up with my feelings in all their fullness. With all the honesty & vulnerability I can muster. I wrote:
I grew up pushing, pushing, pushing my feelings down—denying them, lying about them (a la the typical Southern greeting: “How are you?” / “I’m good!”), etc.
I don’t do that anymore; I allow the feelings, the tears, the pain to surface. To spill out. I tell the truth about them.
Earlier that day, as I journaled, my brow suddenly furrowed. I looked up from the page and realized:
It has freed me from pushing my grief down or getting through my grief as quickly as possible. It’s freeing me to allow the tears to flow when they come up, to let thoughts and questions around what I have/haven’t grieved to not just flit through my mind, but remain, even if painful and hard to sit with. Because that’s what grief is for.
It got me wondering:
What I found within my own history with church cracked open new layers of how deconstruction helps me not just to grieve, but to believe in something better than a church-sanctioned theology of emotion—which stamped out any semblance of who I am as an enneagram-4-empath who has always felt more than what she was allowed to.
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