Learning to Feel – The Quiet Return to Self

They told me to listen for the voice of the heart—but mine spoke in riddles, 
in clenched fists, in silence louder than thunder.

Emotions came not like visitors, but like ghosts in locked rooms, unnamed,
unwelcome, still there.

How do you name a color you’ve never seen? How do you hold a flame
without burning?

But I began—not with knowing, but with noticing. 
The weight in my chest after goodbye. 
The tremble in my hands before truth.

Each feeling, a foreign language I could learn.
Each tear, an interpreter.
Each pause, a chance to choose—

To feel, not flee.
To stay, not store.
To heal, not hide.

Grief is not just about death. It’s about loss of safety, of innocence, of the right to be vulnerable. And when someone grows up in an environment where tears were punished, emotions were shamed, or authenticity was silenced, they learn survival first—not feeling.

But the cost of survival without expression is heavy.

The dam I speak of—yes, it’s real. Held back long enough, it doesn’t just contain sorrow. It begins to rot joy, distorts love, warps trust.

The pressure leaks out sideways—through anxiety, addiction, control, withdrawal, or chronic pain. Learning to grieve, then, is not weakness. It’s sacred reclamation.

It says: I am worthy of feeling. I am safe to feel. I no longer need to fragment myself just to belong.