Being With Our Sadness

Finn’s eyes filled with tears, and her voice trembled as she said,
“My sadness is really strong right now.” 
I silently took her hand and we walked outside, sat on the bench and watched the goats. 
Between tears she shared her sadness and fears, leaning back into my arms. With her 6 year old sorrows laid before us, her emotions that had engulfed her, slowly receded. 
It’s tempting at this moment to say the following 6 words: 
“Everything is going to be okay.” 
We say those words a lot in response to someone’s vulnerability and emotions. 
We say them too much. 
What we need to say is: 
“It doesn’t scare me that everything isn’t okay.” 
What our kids, our teens, our friends and anyone in our life who dares to be vulnerable, to share their story and trust us with their struggle needs to hear, is that you aren’t scared. 
Because they’re scared of the intensity of their emotions, and terrified of your reaction to them. 
Most adults don’t feel comfortable around the ‘uck’ emotions. They were raised hearing:
 “It’s okay, don’t be sad”, not, “it’s okay, TO be sad”. 
So we say “everything’s going to be fine”, because we don’t want to spend a second longer than necessary with everything not being fine. We want to push past the ‘uck’ emotions and move on.
As parents we need to teach our kids how to be sad, scared, worried, and anxious. We need to normalize these emotions, get comfortable with them. Show that they don’t scare you, so they have no reason to fear them as well. And that starts young. 
As friends and partners, we need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable and stop running from those who are hurting. They need to hear that we aren’t scared of their hurt, their depression, their struggle. 
We need to hold space for those we love and let them feel their emotions. 
And instead of saying, “everything is going to be okay”, ask them, “what does everything being okay look like?”. 
Empower them through curiosity to move forward and discover their ‘okay’, knowing that you aren’t afraid to go on that journey with them. 
It starts with befriending emotions, not fearing them. 

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About Becky

Becky Schmooke (pronounced “Smoke”) is a Mindful Leadership Consultant and Speaker, focused on providing action based mindfulness and leadership training to organizations and businesses who are ready to do things differently.

Becky’s Mindful Kitchen, is located outside of Iowa City, and provides truly unique team building and leadership retreats, strategic planning workshops, private parties and classes and weekly summer camps for kids. The commercial teaching kitchen, treehouse, archery range, bush craft skills, first aid training, wood fired pizza oven, chickens, baby goats and timber adventure playground provides endless opportunities for hands on activities.

As a mom to three girls, 60 chickens, 4 goats, 2 dogs and a fire fighter’s wife- life is never boring and provides Becky with endless stories which she uses to illustrate her approach to mindfulness in daily posts on social media.

In all that she does, Becky has one goal, to build confidence in others to take action to live their best life, not just pass time.

Follow For Daily Posts and Baby Goat Videos!

About Becky

In all that she does, Becky has one goal, to build confidence in others to take action to live their best life, not just pass time.