It was another morning when I felt melancholic the moment I woke up. A sad emptiness hung across my chest like a fishing net, thick and heavy. 

I had known this feeling for a long time. 

It bothered me. I had gotten used to thinking that if I felt sad or any other difficult feelings, it meant something was wrong - with my work, with my life, or with me. 

I had tried many things to fix it, to heal myself from it, to release it from my body: yoga, meditation, crystals, therapy, healing rituals… 

I had spent years doing so. The feeling would go away for a while but eventually came back. 

That day, I was just too tired to try anything else. 

I walked to my bedroom and flopped down on my bed. 

The sadness in my chest had shifted. It felt not only thick and heavy but also hot. I felt as though I couldn’t breathe. I rolled from the bed to the cold wooden floor and curled myself into child-pose. 

Tears streamed from my eyes. 

Why do I have to be so sensitive? 

Why do I have to feel so much and so deeply? 

After the crying had worn me down, I pushed myself up into sitting cross-legged. I returned to the one thing I knew to do: I closed my eyes and found my breath. 

Inhale, exhale. 

Somewhere in between my breaths, I sensed an inner whisper: 

“Maybe there’s really nowhere else to do. 

Maybe I need to stop resisting. 

Maybe I need to feel this feeling.”

So I did.  

I don’t know how long I was there on the floor, breathing and feeling my sadness. When I opened my eyes, I felt lighter.  

I walked into my study room, opened my laptop, and by chance - or divine arrangement? - I found a song from Plum Village, a monastery founded by the late Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh: 

The song is named “Hello Sadness,” it goes: 

“Hello, sadness, 

I know you’re there in me. 

And I can clearly see where you come from. 

Hello old friend, 

I make a space for you. 

Inside my heart, there’s a warm embrace for you. 

And I also feel the joy.

And I also feel the love.

And I also have the mindfulness.

So I move on. “

As I listened to the song, tears ran down my cheeks. Not tears of victimhood, but tears of release. 

I don’t have to fight with sadness. My feelings are not my enemies. 

They are also not my diseases. I don’t have to cure myself of them.  

Instead, I can feel them, make space for them in my heart, and embrace them as old friends. 

For the first time, I truly understood that my feelings don’t make me wrong or weak. They make me human.  

They are the different colors of my human canvas. And the landscape of my human existence is beautiful, not despite them, but because of them. 

It is easy to love ourselves when we’re shining. The real work begins when we’re not. 

In your darkest moments, love yourself even more than when you shine. 

How to love? 

Not by denying, numbing, or running away. 

Not by identifying with them. You are not your feelings. 

Not by fighting with them. Your feelings are not the enemies. 

You love by holding space for your emotions, the toughest ones: jealousy, hatred, anger, fear, worthlessness, loneliness, self-judgment, depression… 

By breathing with them. 

By allowing them to be seen, to be heard, to be felt. 

A coaching client once told me that a difficult feeling is a crying child knocking on your door. The child is not perfect. But she has nowhere else to go. 

So you open the door, you let her in, you say: “Tell me, what do you need me to hear?” 

You stay present; you listen; you hold her in your arms until she feels seen and heard and loved by you. 

That’s how you treat every emotion.  

This is the real work. 

This is self-love. 

“Perfect love is to feeling what perfect white is to color. Many think that white is the absence of colour. It is not. It is the inclusion of all colors. So, too, is love not the absence of an emotion (hatred, anger, lust…), but the summation of all feelings. “- Neale Donald Walsch

“Hello Sadness” has been with me ever since. 

Whenever I’m facing a challenging emotion (energy in motion), this song is a radiant reminder to love and accept the energy that’s coming up, asking to be seen.

I’ve sung that song to myself many times, changing the lyrics from sadness to anger, fear, or - with my recent entry to motherhood - guilt. 

“Hello Sadness” taught me another precious lesson. Those difficult emotions prove that their opposites also exist within me: compassion, courage, innocence. 

Perhaps, Neale Donald Walsh is right.

We’re made of perfect love. 

SHARING = LOVING