Ok - so there are some in my household that aren’t fan of this blog post title :). There were even some suggestions that it was a little silly - but it’s making me really happy as I think it encapsulates a concept beautifully.
Our feelings don’t have fences.
Our feelings matter. Our feelings - whatever they are - bleed out into all aspects of our life and our capacity to deal with what is thrown at us. They impact whether or not we have good well-being, whether or not we are OK in this moment.
There is (sadly) still this pervasive idea within our society that “self-care” (people always put it in inverted commas to signal their disdain) or well-being are kinda selfish concepts. And that to engage with them is an add-on, a nice-to-have, or an extra. And, that it is something only someone who was a teeny bit entitled would engage with.…. I suspect these ideas are also compounded by the commercialisation of well-being as another commodity, almost as a luxury. But the thing is that regardless of the persistence of this idea and the dodgy branding of well-being - it is just not true.
Self-care and well-being are not selfish. They are our responsibility*. Our responsibility to ourselves, and our responsibility to others with whom we are so deeply interconnected.
How we feel matters.
Our feelings matters to us, as we have to exist and engage with the feelings we have. Sitting with hard heavy feelings like uncertainty, fear, grief, anxiety, and sadness is hard work. But even all the tetchy feelings, boredom, annoyance, irritation, restlessness - feelings that we try to avoid by doing, by busy - take energy.
Our feelings also matter more broadly as they impact our capacity to do our work in the world. By work-in-the-world, that could simply mean hanging out the laundry or sitting on a park bench. I don’t necessarily mean anything grand. I mean our ability to be in this world as we are, inherently valuable and worthy.
But our work in the world often also includes others. It can directly involve others as we do the work of caring for parents, or kids, or friends. It can also include showing up for colleagues as we do our jobs. It can mean showing up for people we volunteere with, or interact with in shops, or at petrol stations, or at school. How we are in all of those places and spaces impacts on others. We are a social species who deeply dependent on one another and deeply interconnected.
When we are feeling flat, or anxious, or worried, or overwhelmed, or sad, or heavy, we are unable to participate in the way that we would if we were feeling OK. And so it matters.
A quick qualifier - I’m not even talking about feeling happy. Happy is sometimes, fleeting feeling. I am talking about feeling OK - having what I think of as a baseline sense of well-being. Feeling good, neutral, competant, capable, OK. Because OK is enough for us. And it’s where we sit most of the time.
Now obviously hard feelings are important and I’m not suggesting that we get rid of them - but I am suggesting that we need to engage with supporting our own well-being through engaging in the practice of self-care as a practice - so that we are able to feel OK even when we are having hard feelings come up. We can have really hard things going on in our life and also have a good sense of well-being. The two are not mutually exclusive at all (which is why well-being does not equal happiness!).
I spoke about how Craft Elevates The Mundane a few weeks ago but I’ve been thinking about it since in the context of us being back in lockdown for the next age. What does crafting, or even just the ability that we have to know that we can craft, give us? And why is that important at this moment….
And here is my conclusion…
Our feelings don’t have fences.
Which is why craft, or at least uplifting, nurturing types of craft, is so critical to so many of us when times are tricky.
Our feelings - whatever they are - bleed out into all aspects of our life and our capacity to deal with what is thrown at us. And anything that we can do to increase our sense of aliveness, of light, of connection, matters, because it isn’t simply held within the space that has created it, but rather we carry it with us into our everyday. We get to bleed the feelings we are able to engage with when we make a thing into our everyday. A way of thinking about it might simply be a rising tide lifts all boats?
Craft is a gift, enabling us to tap into the magic of us. It brings alive and reminds us of who we are outside of all the external. Making a thing with our hands means showing up for ourselves, for the parts of us who need something more than existing.
In our moments of making we get to reclaim a tiny part of ourselves - because we are valuing what we want in this moment. We are seeing ourselves - our needs, our ideas, our wants, and for a moment we are prioritising them. We are showing up for ourselves and showing ourselves that we matter.
I feel like I don’t yet have the words for this - but I think making makes us feel seen, but not by seen someone else. Instead making something with our hands makes us feel seen by us! Making is engagement with our depths; it’s connection with the deepest and sweetest parts of us, the parts that need and deserve nurturing.
Being aware that our feelings don’t have fences is life-giving in the best possible way because it reminds us to take care and to prioritising our well-being. And it frames it as an act of service to our work - our work being us but also our work as a deeply interconnected human in this world.
Wishing you ten minutes of making today.
Felicia x
* Please know there are times in all of our lives when we aren’t able to engage with these ideas - and of course that is normal and totally OK. And especially when times are so tricky that there is no space/energy for self-care or the practice of wellbeing in this moment, remembering that we are inherently valuable no matter what our circumstances is so very important.
