All Your Feelings Matter
Even Rage Can Become a Doorway to Belonging
Your feelings matter.
All of them.
Do not shame yourself for anything that you feel.
It’s not personal.
What any one of us experiences affects all of us, and our personal experiences, especially our pain, are rooted in collective trauma. There’s nothing wrong with you if you are suffering or feeling intense or uncontrollable emotions.
And if you honor these feelings, they have the power to bring you back to the source. To the heart of belonging.
Last week at the Sanctuary of Divine Nourishment, the cafe I run with my brother, I was working the cash register. I was serving 2 customers who were being sorted of rude. Not overtly mean, but they didn’t acknowledge me hello or make any eye contact. Basically acted like I wasn’t there. Not pleasant, but not a big deal.
Then my brother walked up beside me, and both women broke out into huge smiles, and shouted at the same time “Reggie, Heyyy….”Then went right back to their tight, closed disposition with me. This dynamic is not something totally unfamiliar, but that day, it hit me harder than usual.
With him literally right next to me, and their demeanor shifting so drastically, it felt like a slap in the face. I was furious. Then later, an employee suggested that I come in earlier because sometimes “Reggie is really busy in the morning.” (My brother opens and closes the cafe, 7 am- 4 pm. I come in from 10 am to 3.)
I’d heard a similar comment from another employee in the past.
I felt worried because I care about my brother and didn’t want him to feel unnecessarily stressed. And back then, the cafe was much busier (we are now making about 1/2 of what we made before COVID). So I told my brother I could come in earlier and we could take turns closing so he could have some more time off. His response was, “No, I’m fine.” “But, so and so said that it’s so busy you eat standing up and don’t have time to go to the bathroom.” He rolled his eyes and said,
“They don’t know anything. I got it. Don’t be like mom.” He meant, don’t coddle him. And I was relieved because I really didn’t want to be at the cafe anymore than I already was.
In fact, I didn’t want to be there at all.
My brother and I are built differently. He is naturally more consistent and works well with a routine. Whereas I like to initiate things, I like change and work best with a lot of freedom in my schedule. Also, my brother is less ambitious than I am. He doesn’t work intently on anything outside of the cafe. Being totally content, relaxed, and present with where he is has been a natural gift my brother has that doesn’t come easily for me. I am more restless and need to express my energy in a multitude of ways.
For the past decade, I’ve been deeply committed to spiritual growth, running my own healing business, constantly creating different types of art, and participating in multiple intensive programs. So, often I feel like working at the cafe is an interruption. But when I’m actually interacting with customers (or anyone),
I am present in a way that my brother is not.
I naturally tune in to each person, feel what they are feeling, and want to make sure they feel good.
I know that’s not my job, but I can’t seem to help it. And of course, it’s tiring to do this all day and also makes me more sensitive and affected by people when they’re not feeling so great. I admire how my brother can work there all day with ease, while even a few hours can be overwhelming for me.
The thing is, my brother actually pays much less attention to the customers than I do. He is perceptive and sensitive. And has a naturally healing presence. But generally, he‘s not deeply affected one way or the other by other people. If someone’s rude, whatever. If they’re flirty or friendly, cool.
And everyone loves him!
This is not surprising.
We all know that when someone is too eager or attached, it’s not attractive. Whereas, when someone is just clear and centered in themselves, it feels good to be around them. I know this and I’ve spent a lot of my life wishing I was more like my brother. But, again, I couldn’t help but be the way I am. Which is caring a lot (too much) about other people’s feelings. So someone suggesting I work harder and help more would usually trigger feelings of guilt and worry. “I should be working harder. I should be able to handle more. This isn’t fair to my brother.” I felt a little of that when our employee told me I should work more- but I mostly felt anger. I thought, “You have no idea how hard I work. And even if I didn’t work at all, who are you to judge me? ”I knew this anger wouldn’t be coming up if her comment wasn’t triggering something deeper.
When I got home, I decided to go for a walk. I took some flowers from a vase that was in my room, to make an offering to the earth.
As I walked through the woods, I was guided to pray over the blossoms and release them into the stream, with the intention that all the water, the blood of the earth, be activated with love and purified.
Oddly, most of the flower heads kept flipping upside down, which usually doesn’t happen- and made me a little sad, because they look much prettier with their faces up. Then I tried to comfort the parts of me that felt unseen, disrespected, and unappreciated. Usually, I judge myself for these types of emotions and try to figure out how to stop them from coming up again…
“Why do I get so angry?
Why do I take things personally?
Why am I so insecure?
Am I just full of envy and resentment? “
But lately I’ve been practicing just being kind to myself.
I reassured myself that I don’t have to prove myself to anyone.
That it’s natural to feel hurt when people don’t treat you well.
And that I understand my pain and love myself just the way I am…
Then, this old grief came up from when I was 20.
Back then I managed another business that my parents owned.
Unlike our current cafe, this business was open 7 days a week from early morning to late at night
and included a gas station, deli, grocery and laundromat.
I worked a lot, every day. My brother came on the weekends to help.
And I remembered that he was favored at that business as well.
I don’t mean to make it sound like customers generally don’t like me.
I have great rapport with most customers,
but it was obvious that many customers preferred Reggie.
And the few that were rude or hostile to me,
generally did not act that way to him.
I worked at that business nearly every day, all day
for 3 years, managed all the employees,
worked the deli and register and handled all the deliveries and accounting.
Reggie came on the weekends to help with stock.
Yet somehow, all the customers seemed to know his name,
while hardly any of them knew mine.
(And he definitely wasn’t introducing himself-
he’s actually introverted like I am. )
So, my idea that: “Well, people at this cafe are more familiar with Reggie
(because he’s the one who works full time at our current business)
and it’s natural for the employees to respect him more
because they see him work so hard…”
Suddenly fell flat.
I worked so much more than him in the last business,
and it didn’t change a thing.
When I was younger, this was a whole thing.
Feeling like my brother was the golden one.
(When we were growing up,
he was the only boy on my mom’s side of the family,
who we usually spent time with.
Back then, it seemed my grandmother and
all the adults openly favored boys.
And even though I was close to most of my cousins,
it felt like everyone preferred Reggie.)
Reggie is naturally calm and laid back.
He has a great sense of humor and is playful. And peaceful.
I have always had a temper and was told I was “bad” alot when I was little.
I was sensitive and picky.
I later learned to be a people pleaser and win approval and attention,
but inevitably, my temper (true nature?)
would come out and I’d feel guilty and ashamed.
I got over this as I got older. I didn’t feel so insecure and envious.
But I think that experience at the business I managed when I was 20, showed me that this insecurity was still alive.
And I hadn’t really felt it since then, until recently when Reggie and I started working together closely again.
During my walk through the woods,
I was shown that this belief/experience that
“Everyone prefers my brother no matter how hard/ much I….”
was connected to an ancestor.
My great-grandmother died with grief over the fact that
“No matter what I do, how good I am or hard I work,
everyone prefers my husband.”
The truth is other people were just a mirror — she didn’t love herself.
I asked where that lack of self-love originated.
Then my feet and lower legs suddenly fell asleep.
I had to stop walking. It was shame.
And the shame said “I’m not worthy to be alive.”
Hmm… that’s not my voice. Where did it come from?
The girl babies that were killed in Korea.
Decades ago, when Korea was poor, colonized and war-torn,
it was not uncommon to kill girl babies,
as in many part of Asia and the world because
they were seen as a liability, unable to provide value,
another mouth to feed when things were already desperate.
This belief of unworthiness, this shame,
is carried within the women of Korea,
because they/we are from the land in which these spirits still reside.
I asked what I could do.
The babies’ spirits wanted me to honor them and help them heal.
I wondered if I was supposed to go to Korea and
perform healing rituals on the land.
Or raise awareness somehow and do a big collective ritual.
But it was more simple than that.
I spoke the truth — the same way I spoke to my own hurt self earlier.
“You were not killed because you were unworthy.
Your parents believed they couldn’t provide you
with the kind of life you deserved,
That the current state of their world wasn’t worthy of you.
Your mothers sacrificed the joy of a life with you,
so that you might not suffer as they did and
could only imagine you also would.”
And as I said this, I passed by the stream I had thrown the flowers in,
and suddenly realized- that ritual was for them.
The babies were often killed by drowning them in rivers, at night.
Unseen.
I’d come to believe that I came from a line of mothers
who didn’t really want to be mothers.
I don’t personally know of anyone killing babies
in the way I described above,
But years ago, my cousin Teenah was murdered when she was 18.
Later her spirit told me that her death was
related to infanticide that had occurred in our ancestry.
The person that murdered her also killed his own mother.
— — — — — — — — — —
I do know of many abortions.
And the fact that one of my grandmothers
didn’t want to be married or have children.
That my great grandmothers were closet shamans,
who married and had children to be accepted and “respectable.”
Strong women who never had a chance to fully express their power.
Who instead played ill fitting roles, and martyred themselves.
My own mother said she always wanted to be mother,
but she worked a lot and as a baby and young child
I was mostly left with my grandmother
(the one who never wanted to have children, especially girls!)
On the last new moon, I went to the same stream.
This time I was guided to bring 2 big dahlias,
and a bunch of pink baby chrysanthemum heads.
And I offered them to the river again,
this time knowing they represented the spirits of these babies,
and the mothers, too.
To release and purify all mothers and daughters
from the pain of not being loved, or not loving, as we longed to.
To release any guilt and shame for killing or hurting others,
for failing to have loved in the ways we longed to.
To dissolve any anger and resentment
for having been hurt or killed,
for all the ways we weren’t nurtured or loved the way we deserved.
To dissolve that in the great love
from which we were all originally created,
and which animates and expresses through us infinitely,
despite all appearances.
And I felt appreciation for who I am, as I am.
If I had only judged or pushed down my rage and resentment,
I would never have consciously connected
to the deep suffering of these lost baby spirits.
Or the suffering of their mothers.
And I would not have been an open channel to contribute
to the healing of this wound that lives in this world,
not just in my ancestry, or in Korea,
but through all the waters of Earth.
My feelings can become a gateway through which I serve the world,
if I only honor and listen to them.
Your feelings matter.
And you created yourself exactly the way you are for a reason.
To fulfill your destiny.
May you fully accept yourself and
be an inspiration of radical love for all of us.
