We are living in a time of unprecedented and volatile changes and loss. So, it is normal and natural that with these changes a variety of feelings arise-sadness, grief and anger. Unfortunately, we live in a culture that embraces toxic positivity. Scrolling through the incessant happy, exciting adventures on your social media feeds, you can begin to feel guilty or like there is something wrong with you when you have a normal human emotion like grief, anger, or sadness. The end result of us ignoring our pain, however, is that we actually are limiting our own positive emotions. For you see, you can only feel the positive emotions to the depth and degree that you allow yourself to feel deeply into the difficult, uncomfortable emotions. Any joy or happiness you experience is blunted and/or limited by your inability to lean into the difficult emotions you have as part of the human experience. Today, make some time to grieve and allow yourself to really begin to understand the impermanence of this life. Allow yourself to grieve the fact that nothing is forever. Today, acknowledge that all of life, our possessions, and our relationships are temporary. Making friends with impermanence can help you suffer less, and acknowledging impermanence encourages gratitude for all that is good in this moment. Today allow yourself to feel all your feelings and share them with those who you trust. Accept all your emotions with an open my heart, knowing you are not limited by them. Feel compassion for yourself and your own suffering and extend that compassion to those around you. Compassion encourages us to not turn away from suffering, but to lean into it. This is another way that feeling all of our emotions allows us to be fuller, more tender hearted human beings. Finally, be grateful that in reality that you and I are learning so much from our current losses and that we will come out of this time of loss, fear and great turmoil, stronger, smarter, more compassionate and ready for our next steps of our journey.

Just for today, I listen to my feelings and I am gentle with myself. I know that all my feelings are my friends, not just the ones that I like but all of them. Every experience I have is perfect for my self growth. I recognize that every obstacle is but a stepping stone. My good cannot be stopped. I feel safe in the rhythm and flow of my every changing life. I love life and out of this situation only good will come. And so it is.