Episode 206. Does she have it all together? Or has she built up her emotional intelligence?
In this episode, we’ll dive into a topic that’s been relevant for me lately: processing and embracing emotions, including grief. Here’s a look at what you’ll hear in the episode:
Not a Therapist: Just to be clear, I’m not a doctor or a therapist. But over the past eight years, especially since I was pregnant with my second child, I’ve worked hard to build my emotional intelligence and learn to recognize and process my feelings.
Crying as a Tool: I want to talk about crying—something that makes a lot of people uncomfortable. Personally, I cry almost every day, and I’ve come to see it as a valuable way to process emotions.
Old Emotions: I’m still working on clearing out emotions I’ve been holding onto for over 30 years. It’s been a long journey, but one that I’ve learned so much from.
Finding Safe Spaces: It’s crucial to find spaces where I feel comfortable expressing my emotions. These safe spaces are defined by trust and the ability to hold my feelings without judgment.
Safe Spaces Defined: For me, safe spaces aren’t just physical places but are defined by the trust and emotional capacity of the people around me.
Emotional Capacity: Not everyone has the emotional bandwidth to support others’ emotions. I’ve learned that it’s okay to ask if someone has the capacity to listen before sharing my feelings.
Parenting Through Grief: I’ve learned to model healthy emotional expression for my children, showing them that it’s okay to cry and talk about our feelings openly.
Teaching Through Example: By sharing my emotions with my kids, I aim to teach them how to handle their own grief and feelings in a healthy way.
Experiencing Joy: It’s been challenging but essential for me to allow myself to feel joy even when I’m grieving. I’ve learned that both joy and sadness can coexist.
Finding Beauty in the Storm: Embracing both sadness and joy, and recognizing the beauty in difficult times, helps me find balance and healing.
Thank you for tuning in, friend. I hope this episode helps you navigate your own emotional landscape with greater ease, flow, and compassion.
Xoxo,
Nichole Joy
Subscribe to the show:
Transcript:
Hi. Wow. This is the first time I have spoken into the microphone and been on camera speaking in months. I don't even think I've turned on my hairdryer in months. to diffuse my curls. So this is kind of a treat progress. I say all that to say, bear with me.
My brain isn't fully put back together yet. , I was talking to somebody close to me yesterday and explaining how part of my grief has felt like it's difficult. Um, to form certain sentences and to find certain words. And I was feeling that I almost felt for a while , , like that feeling you get immediately postpartum when words are really difficult and putting together
coherent sentences and explanations is a little challenging, right? Like, you know, the things, but it can be difficult to get it out. And that's how I have felt . And so I have been practicing. I had an audio episode go out. I want to say a week ago, and I talk to certain people.
I have some friends that I talk through various things with. , I have a mentor who I talk various things through with and it's helping. , but what I also understand is that my brain is putting itself back together after a significant loss. And, , yeah, so the body notices that, right. And there's things that are kind of reweaving together this new version.
So I'm practicing being patient with myself. , it can be really frustrating. It's kind of like when you haven't gone to the gym and let's say you haven't done weightlifting in five months and you walk back into the gym that first day and you may not be lifting the same weight that you were lifting where you left off.
great example again, like having a baby, you know, you have a baby and for at least six weeks you're not doing certain moves. Uh, you're not lifting certain amounts of weight and it just doesn't feel right. And it's kind of like that. You know, you have to be really compassionate and give yourself a lot of grace.
And that's kind of how I feel with getting the words out. So this is a little bit uncomfortable for me, but I have things that I really want to share with you. And I've been hesitant to share on video and doing video podcasting, um, because of how vulnerable I still feel, how, , my wound still feels very open.
And if you know me and you've listened to my show for any amount of time, I generally don't share from the wound. I generally share once the wound has healed a bit more. And the thing about this in particular blow is that this healing is going to take a while. And I have things that I'd like to share with you, things that I've been talking through with some friends that I think may be helpful to you.
I know it's been helpful to me. And I don't want to wait. So I'm going to do what I can when I can in a way that feels comfortable for me.
So something that's been coming up in these conversations with really close friends of mine, we have in depth conversations about spiritual concepts and metaphysical things about energy healing. something that's been coming up is processing emotions.
And before we get into a deeper discussion about that, what I'll say is I'm not a doctor. I'm not a therapist. I'm not your therapist. I think we all know that by now. However, I have come a really long way at learning how to process emotions and really even recognize what I'm feeling. And the last say eight plus years, since I was pregnant with my second child.
I have learned a lot, a long way. I'm going to give it to myself. I have worked my tail off to build my emotional intelligence. And I feel really good about where I'm headed in this direction. And so I feel like perhaps there's somebody who may benefit from hearing about this because sometimes I don't share on social media all that much lately
I shared to IG stories, maybe once a week. Occasionally twice a week. And then I, I pull myself back out and I need to go back in and hold myself. There's a lot going on for me behind the scenes, right? Aren't we all doing things and have a lot going on behind the scenes. So what I was thinking about is how generally you're seeing the highlights because that's what social media is like is the highlights.
You're seeing the smiles. You know, I don't post crying pictures. I don't post crying videos, but I'm a huge fan of crying. , in fact, I cry. I want to say almost every day, probably 75 percent of days I'm crying and it's not a bad thing. I feel like, um, crying can make certain people so uncomfortable and really eight plus years ago it made me incredibly uncomfortable to be around people who were crying.
And to be around people who were really feeling their feelings, I didn't even have my, my vocabulary for emotions at that time was so, so small.
And if I'm being honest, I am still working on clearing 30 years plus. Old emotions out of my gut. Yeah, really.
And because of that, I feel like I wasn't born with this. I had to learn it. I had to cultivate it. And because of my experience, I do understand what it's like to be on the other side of this. I understand what it's like to be uncomfortable with people's emotions and uncomfortable with crying and uncomfortable being around the sad girl
What I'm learning is how to do this grief dance. And I want to share some of my process with you in hopes that it helps you a little bit, whether or not you're grieving. I mean, there's all kinds of things to grieve, not just death, right? We can grieve the loss of a marriage. We can grieve versions of our parents that no longer exist as they age.
You may be grieving old versions of yourself. You know, as a mother, that's something that I've come up against multiple times, almost 11 years. I've been a mom now, and there's a lot of times where I would grieve the old version of myself. Right. , even now I grieve not just the loss of my mother, but also.
The old version of me in terms of the business and the passion and the feelings that I had, the energy that I had, right. That felt like it got ripped right out from under me on April 4th. I grieve that because I enjoy that. And I know I will get back there, right? There's important work that I need to do between now and then that will get me back there.
I know it's not gone forever. , but part of grief is healing and
learning how to do the dance.
Okay. So now for my fellow Recovering emotion stuffers.
I think we know by now that emotions are meant to be processed, right? And if you don't know what that means yet, that's okay. , but I think we, we know now that emotions are not to be stuffed down into organs and down into parts of our body and ignored and brushed under the rug. Right. So what does that look like?
Exactly. How do you process emotions
for me? It's sitting in the ship. It's sitting in the feelings and allowing the emotions to move through me and ultimately make their way out of my body through my tears, through my energy healing work and through vocalizing in safe spaces, but what do I mean by safe spaces?
Right? And I don't mean just like safe confines of your home, safe confines of your bedroom. I don't mean that.
It's any space where I feel trust and where it feels like my tears can be held. By the other individual or individuals in the space and where I felt comfortable just letting it all out and releasing.
And when I say these individuals that have the capacity to hold my tears, I say that because I think it's important to note that not everybody has the capacity right now to hold our emotions and to hold our tears. And it has nothing to do with right or wrong, good or bad. Like they're not wrong for not being able to hold our emotions.
It's just who they are or where they're at right now. I mean, they may be incredibly well meaning and they still don't have the emotional capacity to hold my sadness. And quite frankly, it's not everybody's job to hold that.
I do feel like some people are so uncomfortable being around a level of pain that I've been experiencing that they don't want to go near it. And it may be that. It triggers something in them and it pokes something in them,
maybe they aren't ready to face the reality of what they might experience for themselves one day and that is the loss of a parent and saying goodbye to a parent.
Even though that's the way this is supposed to work, right? Like we're supposed to say goodbye for now to our parents. Like they're not supposed to say goodbye to us. Right. And that's the ideal way of things. And we know that in theory, but getting so close to it can be too uncomfortable and too much for some people because it's uncomfortable to think about.
Right.
And it's life altering when the day comes, no matter how old you are and no matter what your relationship with your parent or parents. Was
so there's this emotional dance that I'm learning right and
for me, it's learning what spaces I can cry in, what spaces I smile in, right? And sometimes it's asking the other person before I just unload on them, do you have The emotional bandwidth to hold this right now. And I've gotten, this is coming up because I've had a series of people recently, very recently who feel I can feel them.
And I can feel that they want to share something. And there's almost this feeling of like, they don't want to burden me with their stuff. And so I. Let them know that of course, you don't have to share anything with anybody. However, I have the emotional bandwidth I have the emotional capacity to hold it I can hold your tears and I can sit in the uncomfortableness because I've been in the uncomfortable most uncomfortable of situations I feel like for quite a while on a lot of different levels And I've built up my emotional intelligence such that I do have the capacity.
And I think that that's an important thing to consider if you're somebody who wants to share, but you don't want to burden somebody, you can ask, do you have the emotional capacity right now for me to share this? , I think that that really, , creates a healthy boundary and teaches other people how to hold a healthy boundary, because if they don't have the emotional capacity, they are now given a permission slip to say not right now.
And there's nothing wrong with that, right? And they might learn because you ask them that they might learn that they have the ability to say, I don't have the capacity for this right now. You know, we all have somebody or somebody's and have had somebody's in our lives who call out of the blue or they call and just, And a lot of their stuff without checking to see if you have the emotional capacity.
And that's okay too, because they might not realize that yet. You may even avoid phone calls from certain people sometimes because you know, what's coming when you pick up the phone. you might say things in your head. Like, I just, I can't right now with this. I can't right now with this individual.
And really oftentimes what that is is you don't have the emotional bandwidth to do that. To hold their events, their frustrations. And honestly, sometimes it may just be that you're tired of hearing the same old shit from them, uh, which is okay too.
When I say all this to say, that's part of why I love mentorship and I miss mentorship so much. , I haven't been working one on one with a client per se since before. Yeah, right before my mom passed. And I do have these kind of relationships with some of my very good friends who don't even live in my town, where we go back and forth over texts.
We talk. I feel like I create safe space for them to share with me and I let them know when they can, and then vice versa, they And by the way, if you're my friend and you called to check on me after my mom passed and I unloaded without asking permission, there was inherent permission granted, I believe.
So I apologize because I, I'm not always conscious of when I unload without permission as well, especially when I was deep in the thick of it. And so thank you. Thank you to everybody who actually, you know, made the phone call or who held. My shit but I do feel like I'm working on checking in with people before I unload or going to places and spaces where I know it's safe.
And I know that that's the whole intention of the container. So for example, with my mentor, , when I go to her, that's an inherent part of our work together is I have a space where I go. And I can release the floodgates and it's okay, I want to add another piece as well.
If you're feeling, if you're a parent and you're feeling a lot of emotions, you know, when, when my brother passed, it was a little over eight years ago. Cause I was pregnant with my daughter. She's eight now. And I remember, , trying to keep my shit together in front of my son. He was two, almost three. And I remember feeling like, I don't want to lose it.
I don't want to break down in front of him. I don't want to cry all the time. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to, I don't want him to feel pain. Right. And over time, what I learned is I was not. Doing him justice by hiding my emotions from him. So what I decided to do was teach and model what it looked like to grieve in a healthy way.
And I began to share more about Jarrett. And I began to share more about my experience and I began to cry more in front of him, not just hide. And when he asked, Mommy, why are you crying? I'd say, Oh no, I don't feel so good. I have allergies. No, I don't, I don't lie about it anymore. When I'm crying, I'm crying and it's okay.
And now, um, I've gotten to the point, you know, I don't walk around crying all day, every day, but there are experiences and there's times where something pokes at me and my body wants to release through my eyes and I allow it and I don't hold it back and my kids, you know, they all handle it in a different way.
, I do have one that I'll say like, why are you crying? And I'm like, well, because I'm sad, you know, and I think that that's healthy, right? I think that it's okay. And then sometimes I cry when I'm happy. So I'll say, well, I'm crying because I'm so happy. You know, these are tears of joy or these are tears of grief because I missed this person, um, because I loved this person very, very much when they were.
In human form,
because again, the thing is, as our kids get older, much older than 41, hopefully they are going to face loss. And one day they're going to face losing us. And am I doing them justice? Am I teaching them correctly by modeling, stuffing emotions down and pretending that I have sinus issues or what would be better, even though it's uncomfortable?
I can sit in the discomfort if it means growth, if it means expansion, if it means something that will set my children up for a healthier experience. as they grow, right? Even as kids, but then also as adults, I need to model grief. I need to model healthy grief for them. So what does that mean? That means I have to grieve healthily, right?
That means I'm not having wine every day. I'm not drinking all the time. I'm not suppressing emotions. I'm not acting like I'm okay. , I am experiencing pain. And when I do, I'm And they ask, I tell them, or if my mom isn't here for, for an event, you know, this past two days ago, it was Monday, Labor Day. And I had, an impromptu birthday barbecue for my dad and we could all feel my mom's absence. I felt it pretty deeply. I feel like my dad felt it. I don't know about the kids, but I could feel my mom's absence on days where I host a barbecue or something at gathering at my house. You know, I'm expecting text messages from her all day. You know, what time do you want me there?
What do you think dad would want to eat? What can I bring dad to eat? And I'll pick up dad on my way and I'll bring him over and then I'll take him home for you so you can prep your, your stuff in your house. And. It was very challenging because it was the first time I've had a function here , since she's been gone,
and so when they ask, I tell them the truth and I share that I miss her and one of the kids. You know, she says it still probably four times a week. She cries usually before bed and I hold it and I hold her emotions and I sit with it and sometimes I cry with her because I can feel it and I want her to know that it's okay.
And then I also show them that it's okay to feel joy. Right alongside your sadness. We were watching inside out the original. I've seen the second one. It's also very good but we were watching the original yesterday and I didn't watch the whole thing But the moment where joy is trying to figure out what to do with sadness like she's in the way She's irritating because she's bringing up all of these irritating emotions, right?
And joy is like, well, we've just decided that sadness has nowhere to go So we just, she's just here. And it reminded me of how I'm navigating. This is that sadness has nowhere to go. The grief has nowhere to go. So I just let it be here when it needs to be here. Sometimes it's. Stronger than other times feels more intense. And there's also a lot of joy and there's a lot of reasons to feel joy. My dad is celebrating his 72nd birthday and that's something to be joyful about.
, it just so happened that like the day before we were getting devastating news out of Israel. And part of me felt like maybe we should just cancel the barbecue. Maybe we shouldn't proceed. Maybe this isn't a good time. You know, our hearts are so heavy and. What I decided is that like, yes, there's sadness.
Again, I keep going back to this, right? There was a lot of sadness and there's also so much to be joyful about. My dad's here for another birthday. And if nothing else, like that's an amazing reason for joy. And he deserves to feel joy. I don't believe that one thing cancels the other thing out. Now, if he didn't have it in him and he didn't want to do it, that would be one thing.
But I think he wants to feel the joy. He wants to be around his grandkids. He wants to be with me, even if it means dressing him up in a, , disco cowboy shirt for his disco cowboy barbecue.
And it used to be really difficult for me to experience joy, especially in the first year after my brother passed, it was really difficult for me to feel. okay with feeling joy and I felt a lot of guilt around feeling joy. And again, this is something that I've worked on and cultivated this ability to acknowledge that both are important.
Joy is important. And if we allowed all of the reasons that we can grieve the very important reasons to grieve and have sorrow and sadness in the world to overcome our joy, I don't know that we would make it out of this alive, you know, and. I want to make it out of this alive and not just alive, but like, well, and thriving.
And so I do think it's incredibly important that when you're able to allow yourself to experience joy to experience it. And if you have these moments where it feels like the sadness is so heavy, that it's like that Eeyore from,
Winnie the Pooh. Isn't it Eeyore? That's always sad. And it's almost, yeah, it's like he has that rain cloud over him. And this is another thing I was talking to a friend about the other day is. You know, when there's that sadness and it feels like you are in the rain and the rain cloud is just hovering over your head, I think it's important to remember that and actually had this intuitive hit that came through to share with her.
And I'm going to share it with you that there's beauty in the rain. And can you find the beauty in the storm? Can you remember that after the storm is a rainbow? And the sun always comes back out. It always does. And so instead of fighting the rain, instead of trying to resist or shove the rain down and hide it, because in Florida in August, September, you cannot hide from the rain.
What if you just allow the rain to be the rain and you create space for it just like you do the sun.
I hope you found some or all of this helpful if you are navigating any heavy emotions.
And so if you see me on Instagram stories or out in real life or doing whatever it is and I'm joyful. I have worked really freaking hard to get to the point where I allow myself to experience that level of joy, right alongside the level of sadness that I have. And I only hope that more of us will allow ourselves to do that.
And I hope this encourages you to do that because you deserve it too.
And the last thing I want to mention is my book is moving along. I yeah, I'll share with you a little bit really quick. So right after my mom died, I had this wave, maybe it was part of the grief. I don't know, but I had this energy come through of like, I felt like I needed to write immediately. And I share more in the book about.
Why that is like, why I believe it came through the way that it did. So I wrote probably 14, 000 words in a very short amount of time. And then it felt like the heaviness of the grief really hit me hard. And I stalled because I needed to do summer with my kids. So I had three kids home for three months.
There was some summer camps here and there, but ultimately like there was a lot more us time and it was important time because they, they need me increasingly. Totally. More and more than ever. And especially with everything that our family has been through in recent months. And I know I don't for a second regret pouring my time and energy and presence into them during that period.
But what that meant was my book took a backseat and only recently now that everybody's back to school, it's the fall. I am tuning back into the book
I'm really looking forward to sharing more about our journey. My mom and I are healing journey. I don't want to go too much into it because quite frankly, I don't think I can speak without choking up and publicly on a podcast doesn't feel like a safe space for me to do that. I'm not comfortable doing that.
So. You'll have to just bear with me until the book is published. I realized that I probably won't be able to do an audio version of it yet. I'm not ready to speak all of the chapters aloud without you know, getting very emotional. So I'm doing that in private spaces for now written form. I will be ready to share sooner and saying excited to share it with you feels like a strange word, but I'm excited to share it with you because of the potential activations that will be in the book for you.
If you have any kind of interesting relationship dynamics with your own mother, my mom and I came to a beautiful place. It took us a long time, but we got there. And there's just so much, so much more than I can share in an Instagram post, in a podcast episode.
And I want it to feel more permanent, more legacy like. So, a book it is. Stay tuned.