Hearing myself out.

I wrote a book! Both paperback and ebook are now available on Amazon. Everyone has been congratulating me and telling me how dreams come true and so on and so forth. But I couldn’t bring myself to be excited for it. I feel bad cos even in my therapy session I feigned my excitement.

I think I only felt excited when I published it all by myself in my hotel room. But once it was out I didn’t feel excited. I’ve been pushing these feelings down each time the topic of the book comes up cos I’m expected to be excited and I don’t have the energy to explain why I’m not excited.

It wasn’t until now that I sat down to journal about my feelings cos they were starting to ruin everything. I have a serious relationship with my journal. I get cranky when I go for at least 3 days in a row without journaling. I can’t lie to myself so I’m very honest with myself when I journal. I was avoiding journaling cos I didn’t want to have to face my front and deal with my feelings.

Anyway, I just sat down and wrote about my feelings and how not excited I am about the book now that it’s live. I’ll explain. I think it’s imposter syndrome or a vulnerability hangover. My book is very personal to me. It’s for my precious. So a part of me feels like only he would love the book cos it’s for him. I also feel like no one will enjoy what I had to say. Whew. Difficult feelings. It’s made me feel so grumpy cos the feeling is also telling me that no one will ever want to read any of my books even if I write more books.

I know none of that is true. But it’s how I feel right now and those feelings threw a tantrum until they were acknowledged. These are some of the feelings we never have to do anything about. They are not true and feelings ARE fickle. But to move forward and even open myself up to feeling something else I had to start by acknowledging the ugly feelings.

Our feelings are complex. They aren’t always true though. They serve as guides of what is happening in us. Ignoring our feelings is like ignoring ourselves essentially. I tried to ghost myself and failed. I had to sit down and hear myself out, reassure myself and then take a deep breath and feel something else.

Acknowledging all my feelings is part of my self care. I have since learnt that acknowledging feelings doesn’t make them true. So we can all safely acknowledge any ugly feelings so we can free ourselves up to feel something else.

I feel lighter now that I’ve said “out loud” what feelings I’ve been struggling with. If the elders in my life got away with ignoring me as a child my feelings are not letting me get away with the same thing. I always have to make time to hear myself out before I explode. I seriously start feeling miserable when I try to avoid certain feelings.

So here I am. I write because I love to write. Anyone reading my work is a bonus. And I am grateful to each and everyone of you who read my posts. ♥️ There’s no purer love than my love for the written word. So thank you for sharing in my joy.

I wrote a book!!! I am so grateful to everyone who has encouraged me along the way. I hope to push past these post publishing feelings and write more and write better. Makwande! 💓