Dear Empath, You Need To Hear This!

For a few weeks now, I’ve been untangling the wires of my heart. The wires that wrapped me up and constricted all my feelings… ok maybe not all of them. But I was starting to become a fragmentation of the super feeler I used to be. Yeah, super feeler. I used to be increasingly sensitive and at some point, I learned that to be strong, and to be confident, I needed to ditch the sensitivity. It wasn’t so much conscious thought as it was a need to escape the painful heart drilling experiences that came with having such strong senses and feelings. Our society tells us it’s not normal to be so sensitive; you need to heal, you need to dig up those wounds, you need to protect yourself, you need to work on your nervous system, I’ve heard it and done it all. Sure, regulating my nervous system was a God-sent, but it still didn’t take away the sensitivity … the bone aching sensitivity that made me feel like I was so soft, so susceptible to being used, abused, and walked all over. I learned boundaries, and those boundaries become bounds; bounds around my entire being. I excavated fear, after fear, after fear on this journey and then I replaced my fear of being abandoned, my fear of loss, and my fear of being screwed over for a bulletproof vest that left my heart just enough room to beat. I was restricted in the capacity to feel the depths of life moving through me and I wondered why life felt so lackluster. Nothing seemed to bring the thrill I had felt before. I pushed myself to the edges of emotional situations, to feel something, anything. I was starving to feel, my sensitivity was aching within my chest to unleash it wildly into the world again. It left me moving through bodies like they were nothing more than clothes on a rack. No, not sexually, but just meeting new people, seeing the signs and ignoring them, and just keeping them around in hopes of feeling the soul aching bruise of being burned again. The same patterns ensued, but there I was unposed. Sure, at some level I was elated that I no longer was reactive to the things that used to crush me. Was this what it felt like to be healed? To release emotional trauma and karma? This was it? No way. It couldn’t be. Every sensation was dulled, every feeling muted, and there I was holding my sensitivity back like a dog on a leash.

It sounds a little extreme when I put it that way. It wasn’t like I was completely numb, I felt tons of emotions, they moved through like water through a pipe. I cried, I screamed, and I danced. Yet, it felt like someone else was experiencing it. Like something was still just off. Words fall short of sensations 90% of the time, and there was something I just couldn’t articulate that felt like it was holding me back. Holding me back from my highest expression, from my creativity, from opening my arms to love, true friendships, and happiness.

So a few weeks back laying on a beach in Florida, the ocean did what it normally does and opened me up. Cracked me wide the heck open before I could even make sense of what was going on. Luckily, I’m no stranger to the power of the ocean. She’s been a huge essence of my journey and healing time and time again throughout this life. It felt like a salty baptism as I plunged into the lukewarm water at half past noon on a Thursday. As I came up to the surface, the fresh salty breeze pierced my nostrils. Air. I could taste it. It was like taking my first breath all over again. For the past few years, I’d breathe and there wouldn’t be that crisp tingling sensation that you often get when you inhale fresh air after a rainstorm. The cooling sensation of the breath meets your body. None of that was there. Yet, here, at this moment… I awakened again. I was rebirthed into the world, breath and all.

I ran out of the water glistening as the sun hit my skin, warming me back up to the wholeness of my being once more.

Since this moment, I’ve been consistently reminding myself it’s safe to lean in. To lean into the sensitive nature of my ways FULLY. Feeling fully is one of the greatest tasks I’ve ever known in this life. To stand in the face of every little emotion, every little feeling, every little soft opening within you, and to LOVE IT is the beautiful task of becoming human. These opening moments aren’t foreign, they happen to us all the time. I’m sure you’ve experienced this several times in your life. You know when something hits your chest and you feel yourself expand, the energy of your heart radiates from you and overcomes your whole body, and at that moment you have the deepest sense of appreciation for life. At that moment, it’s like you are invincible. It’s the greatest high of your life. You are probably singing in the car with friends, or maybe you're watching the sunrise, or maybe it’s when you’re working on that project you’re super excited about and you lock in all the pieces. It’s those small moments where you’re not expecting anything, you’re not chasing anything, you’re not trying. It’s those electrifying moments when you catch a glimpse of the Universe that you are when life reflects to you your own heart, and you have no choice but to OPEN to the vast infinite abyss that you are, that your heart is. Your chest warms, your cheeks ache, and your body gets that tingling feeling as if you could feel all your cells vibrating at that very moment. Time slows, the past fades, and the future becomes your present moment. Yeah, you know THOSE moments. These are when we open to our sensitive essence, so much so that we are overjoyed with an indescribable feeling. Then, something happens, let’s say we meet someone new. Then all these old instances where that sensitivity led to pain, hurt, and heartache pop back up like a fire alarm. So what do you do? You close down, you bring up that wall, and you become that fragmented essence of your soul all over again. Much like I did. But then I wrote a letter. I wrote a letter to the sensitive soul. That letter gave me the courage, the courage to remain open and soft no matter what; to remain sensitive and recognize that is my strength.

So now, I pass this letter along to you in hopes of it awakening the same thing it did in me. In hopes of it opening you back up to the bliss, the creativity, the love, the soul that I’ve danced with the past few weeks. Here’s to you!

A letter to the sensitive soul,

At some point in your life someone, something, made you believe that your sensitivity was a curse. A damned near-life sentence in shackles and chains.

So you did your best to hide it, stuff it away, to pretend it wasn’t there. You grew disconnected from the very essence of yourself, from your heart, from the pure angelic wisdom that flowed through your senses and brought you to your knees. You cut the cords to your sensitive nature, and in the process, you cut yourself off from a key part of yourself, the part that made you- you.

From that very moment, you agreed with this curse. This agreement where everyone and everything reflected to you the inferiority of being sensitive. It’s like it saw your sensitivity despite how much you tried to cut yourself from it, how you tried to barricade the walls of your own beaming heart. Then you learned, you learned it wasn’t just a curse to be sensitive, but it was unsafe. Everything and everyone sought to validate this agreement you made, this curse you held onto like thorn-adorned roses.

but you see it was never a curse, and it was never unsafe. It was simply just the way the tainted essence of your sensitivity made you see. When you wipe the fog from your glasses and look through them again, you see that your sensitivity isn’t a curse but a miracle in a world grown cold and detached; a heaven-sent blessing in a black river of hell. Your sensitivity was never something that pinned a target on your back. It’s been the thing keeping you breathing, keeping you alive, and keeping you feeling SOMETHING despite all of your attempts to feel nothing. When you stop fighting with your sensitivity, everyone else stops as well.

You see, whatever or whomever it was that told you your sensitivity is a sign of weakness was actually speaking from their own wound, the wound created by lack of feeling, the wound created from the disconnection to the heart. They passed along to you the disaster relief plan they conjured up amid their pain and sorrow and sent it deep into your bones. But this plan was never yours, which is why it’s never worked for you. Your plan sounded something much sweeter than a damn witch hunt on the fragile souls of the heart.

You planned to learn to embody your sensitive nature as your superpower despite the world of darkness trying to get you to sell your soul. How do you sell your soul you might ask? You sell your sensitivity, you trade in your tears for a bone dry demeanor, you trade your heart for a heavy red brick of cement, and you trade your senses of your soul for a few blue pills of numbness.

You see the lackluster illusion of life was never yours, but the giving away of your secret weapon. The weapon that really isn’t a weapon at all, but the musing of your soul. Your sensitivity is a knife that cuts through shadows and illuminates the pathway to truth. Your sensitivity is the compass that guides you in the darkness to the destination of your heart.

See, your sensitivity isn’t sensitivity at all... it’s the sweetness of being alive; the solace of your soul. And to lean into your sensitivity is the bravest most courageous act one could ever fulfill. Do NOT ever let anything or anyone close you off from THAT.

Your empathy for life itself isn’t something that makes you a hindering being in this world but makes you a wise leader in the paradigm where the heart rules all. Please cherish your sensitivity, those emotions that you feel that might not even be yours, the yearning pull within your heart to be kind even when you want to throw in the towel because everyone has taken advantage of that. DO NOT build a mote around your heart, simply become more selective about who has access to you. Your sensitivity makes you valuable. More valuable than gold from Venice. See the value that this holds, and do not for a second, ever allow yourself to believe you are cursed. You are a divine blessing and your senses are your wings that beckon you to fly. So fly. Soar. Lead the way for others to embrace their own stratosphere of emotions. Honor the waves the way you rise and fall just like the ocean, for in that you find yourself, for in that you find your beauty, and there you’ll find the very thing you’ve been searching for since your eyes opened fresh from the womb. Your truth.

Sincerely,

A sensitive soul who sees and honors that within you.