You know those things you keep bottled up inside? Stored away for safekeeping because you don’t want to process, understand, or deal with any sort of emotion? Well, I hate to break it to you, but that bottle is getting full, and it’s about to do a Diet Coke and Mentos experiment on your ass.

It’s time to slowly take small sips. It’s time to process and understand what you’re feeling…why you’re feeling. It’s time to water the grow and heal with the feel fertilizer.

It’s time to feel the heal.

When we decide to say yes to life, sometimes we get caught up in the yes and not in the moment. We tend to forget to feel and process why we are saying yes. When I first started my year of yes, I wasn’t sure what exactly I was getting myself into.

Was I expecting to have a ton of fun? Yes.

Was I expecting to unravel everything I had suppressed from my past to start the healing process? Hell no! I was just supposed to be saying yes and having fun.

But as I started saying yes, I ventured into a web of healing. Healing that I thought was done, not even knowing that I still hadn’t healed everything I thought I had, back when all that healing was supposed to be relevant.

Turns out, all the feelings I had suppressed, as I skipped my way through the scavenger hunt, collecting the next clue, moving on to the next piece of the puzzle—I had forgotten about dealing with the aftermath. I had forgotten that through all the growing and the fun I was having, I was supposed to be saying yes to feeling too. I was supposed to be feeling everything I was subconsciously trying to heal.

But sometimes we don’t want to feel. Anything. So we shut that door. Until we start to open our hearts and minds to new experiences, and the universe sets a path of breadcrumbs for us to follow. A path for us to unveil and discover through the healing.

And as I was trying to have the growth and healing catch up with the feeling, I forgot about what healing was. It was a process I had forgotten crept up on you, if you didn’t give it the proper time it needed to finally find peace.

The week of “I can’t win.”

Six months ago, I had a roller coaster of emotions kind of week. It was the end of 2016 and I was so desperately trying to grab every piece of myself that I could in this journey of yes I had agreed to take part in. While it felt like a ticking time bomb until the new year, I was making sure I kept going strong in the home stretch. But like all things, the roller coaster of emotions was starting to catch up to me.

The week before Christmas, a lot happened to me. I look back at it now and see that it was bold and brave until the very end. I was put in situations I didn’t think I could handle and yet I survived. I was challenged, doubted, lost, afraid, but I was still alive. 

Some of my I can’t win moments:

My dog decided to perform a magic trick of sorts that ended up scaring the living shit out of me while emptying out my wallet right before the holiday.

I was literally burned by one of my favorite beverages and have a huge scar to remember its betrayal.

On the day before Christmas Eve, I got in a fight with my brother where we both said some mean things.

When I thought everything was over, I was quite literally hit in the face by a flying machine that ended up giving me a ceremonial unicorn bump on my head.

These are all true stories.

I was done to say the least. But then I realized why all these things were happening to me. There was one more thing I said yes to in my year of yes.

I realized I had also said yes to being brave.

And sometimes, life doesn’t like it when you’re brave. It senses an imbalance in the force, and decides to knock you around a bit. Too make sure you’re paying attention of course, but in my case, this was quite literally.

But at the end of the year, I had said yes to being brave.

I had decided to follow my gut and pour my heart out. I took that bravery and grabbed courage. I agreed to meet with a spiritual counselor that God had so graciously made me stumble into the week before. Another unplanned breadcrumb in this journey of yes, where I finally got a chance to tell the story of the past 10 years of my life and my struggle with faith. I had reached out. I had been brave to choose to continue the journey. To heal and find the answers unveiled before me.

And after 10 years, someone finally looked at me, and instead of assigning a feeling or assuming anything about me, they said four beautiful words:

So, what’s your story?”

After all those years, I had realized that was the breadcrumb I needed—that’s all I really wanted. Someone to just ask me those four simple words.

To look at me, ready to listen, more than willing to take the time to understand me and hear about the journey that had brought me there—a nervous wreak, ready to unbottle and unveil. Ready to finally feel the heal. After all those years of fighting what had happened and ignoring the feelings, I told my story and had finally felt free.

Healing takes time.

I think at the end of the day, when you are trying to grow, feel and heal at the same time, you tend to forget about some of the things that come with those steps. But you have to remember that you need to take time to feel the heal. You need to unveil and marinate in the progress.

Healing takes time, sometimes years. And that is okay. You are on your journey to healing. But if you want to cut down on the time, start feeling. Feeling speeds up the process. Feeling helps you heal. Healing helps you live. And you my friend have a lovely life worth living.

It’s okay to be brave, it’s okay to pour your heart out. That is part of the healing. If you’re afraid that healing will leave you vulnerable and lonely, you are wrong. Healing, while the process is scary at first, will leave you stronger, wiser and lovelier.

More. Human.

There is absolutely no shame in asking for help, or asking a friend to lend an ear. You might be surprised to find that the person you ask for help from, might actually be going through the same thing you are. But you’ll never know, unless you decide for once in your life, to be brave and feel something that is going to help you heal.

Lovely life Lesson:

It’s okay to feel things. It’s okay to reflect on the pain you’ve endured and open up old wounds to feel the healing, but don’t dwell in them. Turn the healing into growth but remember to feel it, face it. Or else, it will never really leave you. It will stay inside you. It will sneak up on you and be triggered by things that you have yet to resolve.

Don’t hold back from closure, it’s okay to feel the growth you’ve healed. Don’t be afraid to talk to someone about it. Call your friend, your mom, tell the next person you sit next to on a plane, anyone. Tell your story, feel free.

You deserve to feel your heal. 

You are ready to heal.