Yesterday I fell over.
As a 46 year old woman, it’s pretty rare that I fall down. I can’t remember the last time, actually. Perhaps it was skiing about 4 years ago! So, I found the experience really shocking.
You may have seen on social media that I have a puppy. Boomer is a big bundle of joy and fluff. He’s a Golden Doodle (Mum is a standard Poodle and Dad is a Gold Retriever) and just 5 months old but boy is he heavy and strong already! Seems he is entering his ‘adolescence’ already so pulling on his harness (back breaking for me!), biting the lead and generally being a naughty toddler is behaviour that seems to have happened overnight and he caught me off-guard, exhausted and vulnerable yesterday.
I’m not sure what happened. One minute I was wrestling the lead from him and the next I was in the middle of the road, cut hand and knee, food all over me (I was carrying a Thai take-away!) and crying!
I was sat in the middle of the road, crying!
Boomer ran off and thankfully very kind neighbours who had watched me topple over him, grabbed my unruly pup and were so so kind to me. Thankfully we were only a street away from home.
Once inside, I started to clean myself up. There was a split second of awareness where I knew I had a choice. I could carry on sorting myself out and moving on with my day like nothing happened – which would have been very easy to do – or I could take a moment, acknowledge what just happened and allow myself to feel the shock of it. I knew I felt shocked and I knew I could smooth over it and carry on or I could feel it. I chose to feel it and I was quite surprised by the volume of tears that leaked out of me.
Without any effort at all, the tears flowed. They flowed and flowed. At first I was feeling the vulnerability of the experience – the sheer lack of control I had over the situation and how fragile I felt. I was perplexed by this animal – what on earth was going on!? What was I going to do!? And then I don’t ‘know’ what the tears were about but they felt like a massive release of months of holding it together – kids home schooling, learning how to be a mum to a puppy, shifting business dynamics, no proper summer holiday, multiple cancelled plans and bloody COVID-19. F***ing Covid!
I just wept and wept. I made tea and wept. I made food and wept. I tidied up and wept. Thankfully no-one else was home so I could really let it rip! It was the oddest thing – I was carrying on with tasks and the tears just kept coming out. Eventually they stopped and I felt SO much better.
Why am I telling you this?
I’m sharing this with you because I believe it’s SO important to trust and allow our body to do what it knows to do in order to release stored emotion. Blocked emotions make us sick and tired and lacklustre. Blocked emotions inhibit our creativity, passion and intuition. We women are SOOOO good at sucking it up and carrying on. We handle stuff! We juggle! We make shit happen. We are pro at it. That ability to juggle multiple plates at once serves a purpose. Until it doesn’t.
Yesterday’s fall felt like an opportunity – life threw me a curve-ball that gave me the chance to release a bunch of stuff that could hamper my desire to step forward and create what I desire next in my life. It felt like a release that needed to happen and I feel proud to have allowed it. Once upon a time I would have just carried on.
My invitation to you today is to take a moment to acknowledge how you are truly feeling and if you need a bloody good cry, go have one! It’s ok – you’ll survive it.
Love,
Katie xx
