What questions do you ask yourself to open your heart? Where’s the instruction manual? Thank you for sharing this blip today and bringing my awareness to something that needs my attention desperately! If only I could access my magic wand to just open my own heart!
I understand open heart surgery is quite painful without anesthesia. ;)
---for me to be open is to hurt...I know there is the openness as Kelly described when your team wins or things go well, and the full opness is when there is pain, sadness, shame...all that icky stuff we are supposed to sit with too. It's not like actors in Hollywood who think of sad stuff to help themselves cry...rather it is more like thinking about what is most important to you and why it's important and then looking critically at the important stuff. As it begins to click in your heart and mind, there comes a moment when the pain comes to you...maybe loss, or thoughts of loss, but also there is the thinking of how these things or this thing is so important to you and you start to wonder if you deserve it or not, but you also feel like deserved or not, you still want it, no matter what. Maybe, in a way this is how it comes? That's my experience with feeling open. I hurts but its not a pain that tortures so much as a pain that sets value to the important stuff. ...Maybe I'm broken and not very smart on this, but that's how I think of it.
Actually, JC, I think you articulated that beautifully. The pain you’re describing is felt because we love something and don’t want to lose it but know we could at any moment and probably will someday. Then choosing to love it anyway. The best, best, best meditation on this is the movie Arrival.
Great questions, Kate! In this situation, I was asking myself, “What is the pain I’m protecting against feeling, and am I willing to feel it instead of protecting against it?”
Regarding the instruction manual, I have been hard at work on that for the last two years. 😊 THE ROAD LESS TRIGGERED is scheduled to publish in March 2026!
Oh, man. This post had the Kelly magic of being the right words at the right time. Thankful for you and thankful that I somehow was led to you in this huge world and even huger internet. (Gonna have to figure out how I stumbled upon you…it was before Lovable, I believe.) I plan to do some journaling in response to this one. Glad Billy is safe and sound, and we are all rooting for Aidan. Wow is he learning so many life lessons in this chapter. I will pray that he keeps his heart as open as possible through it all, and that we all do.
Mary, you had me at Kelly Magic. You said everything that I was trying to articulate. My pastor once told me that the best sermons feel like they were curated just for you: Kelly Magic.
Mary, I just can’t explain to you what a tremendous blessing it is to have someone you’ve never met so sincerely rooting for you and the people you love. What a gift. Thank you for giving that to me today. Here’s to keeping our hearts open through it all!
Most people want freedom like they want abs, without doing any crunches. But emotional freedom? That’s Olympic-level vulnerability. You don’t just sip your morning coffee and arrive there. You open your ribs like cathedral doors and let both angels and raccoons waltz in.
That moment in Walmart? That’s sacred ground. Grief and relief holding hands in the fluorescent lighting aisle. Bless Billy, high priest of the Wheel Well Temple.
Thanks for reminding us that a fully feeling heart isn’t fragile. It’s feral and faithful.
Deb, it’s great to hear from you! For those of you reading this and keeping score, Deb was the first (and only) participant in our first community call thirteen years ago. What a blessing that you’re still reading and sharing your WHOOPs with me.
Speaking of which, I’ve been telling Alek (also, in these comments) that he makes me think of you because his words always leave me with that WHOOP feeling!
"...It isn’t until something knocks the wind out of you that you have to be intentional about getting your breath back."
Geez man stop hurting me. I don't care about your dumb cat. I'm telling you it's not important to me so stop making me cry about my own kick to the chest over your inability to properly determine if an animal was in or around a vehicle for several hours. ....But, I do care about my children. In my layoff two weeks ago today, before my second attempt to pass a major exam (failed again), I sat alone in my house, children gone to camps, wife gone to be with her granny while her mother was with her sister (the younger sister, getting a lumpectomy)...I sat there alone...absorbing and dazed and then I sobbed. I sobbed so hard it scared our cat. He was lurking in hopes to grab a piece of my snack then stared at my wrinkled face with water streaming and my convulsing body and decided he didn't need to be there. He just curled up in a comfy spot to give me space...without totally running away. My thoughts were on my children. What if I couldn't find a new job, what if I couldn't match my salary even with a new job. What about the camps and the things I do to show love to my kids at Christmas. What will I do to help them smile and feel safe and comfortable. It was terrible. It still is. I'm already tired of trying to find a job, but I won't stop.
Then you come along and throw your words at me and I read them like a naive fool who seems to forget how you make all my tears come out, even in times past while I was sitting at work, or as Elijah sees his wife at her parents home.
I know what it's like to fall off the monkey bars in the 1980's during recess at the elementary school. Not the short ones for the "little" kids, the "big kid" ones. I know what it's like to land on your back on the dirt packed harder than bedrock. I know what it feels like to wonder not only, "will I ever breathe again", but "have I ever breathed before". That flash of, "maybe I die right here". I'm on the ground again. I'm having a hard time breathing. I wonder if I'll get to breathe anymore...if I ever was really breathing. I feel so much lately...so raw. I'm getting tired of feeling man. I'm so, so tired. I was already feeling things before the recent events of life. Little twinges of midlife psychology, knocking on the door, looking for consideration. Now this. Now your dumb article....sorry, my petulance is all I have in some measure of jest and feigned rebellion to feel any control at the moment.
I don't know what to do but I'm trying to do right things. I'm trying to apply faith, logistical smarts, sage wisdom from others who know this well, seeking support from family and friends. All of it. I have a lot you see. So much. I'm scared because, I wonder if I'm supposed to lose what I have. Am I supposed to be humbled back to the dirt...breathless...so that I find a new and better priority in life? Am I supposed to shed layers of things and stuff and comforts so I can finally be real and honest about what little I actually deserve in life? So I can stop being fake and be the lower version of myself? Or am I just supposed to stay some course that will be a shining new and better outcome I never could have imagined? Who knows...not me. God knows. I have trepidation aking Him just what He wants me to know. I think, or I thought I was aware of some things, but I'm really stewing in my doubtful juices of late and it's tough. Best I can muster for now is Mark 9:24 And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief. - I'm the man with children, hoping for their sakes an my own pathetic helpless feelings that a personal miracle can be worked, even though I'm not so great in my trust of the Lord. Not so great at believing like Thomas in John 20: 27-29.
JC, this is real and raw and I’m especially grateful for your willingness to share it with us. I deeply admire your willingness to open your heart in that recliner and to let the sadness out. In my experience, at this kind of midlife moment of reckoning, that isn’t just a one-off experience, but may need to happen repeatedly in the weeks and months ahead. It’s how we shed the identities we’ve been building for a lifetime, release the attachments to all the things we’ve convinced ourselves we need, and learn to move more nimbly again with just our soul to guide us into the next thing. It’s frustrating and scary and painful, but I believe in you, my friend. You’ve been wanting something new for so long now. You’ve got this. Something new is on the way!
You know what I said to my boss when he brought me the news? I need this. Thank you. I knew I wasn't going anywhere in this place and now I can just dedicate my time looking for the next right thing. He was floored. I don't regret anything so much as just feel very intimidated by the possibility of me doing something new and maybe even better. It's easy to daydream about better things, different things, but it's really hard to go live it.
Being aware of what I'm afraid of and addressing it helps me to be open hearted. Not being a slave to fear, especially the fear of any kind of suffering. As an empath I feel other people's pain. I can't take their pain away but I can walk beside them.
Beautiful, George, and a wonderful insight with regard to fear. I’ve taken to saying, “There’s no such thing as fear, there’s just pain I don’t want to feel.” What a blessing you are to walk alongside people in their fear and pain.
"When your heart is open, you show up to the worst stuff in life with the best stuff inside you. On the other hand, navigating a crisis with a closed heart is like playing a guitar with mittens on—you lose your best ability to make something beautiful out of it."
How counterintuitive it feels to show up open-hearted to life's most difficult moments. It feels like too much to ask, even if it is Wisdom doing the asking.
I’m with you, Damon. And I wonder if Wisdom knows it’s too much to ask, which is why It gave us the ability to close our hearts. We’re free to do what we want when it hurts too much. Indeed, it may be the only way to discover that full freedom only comes from opening to what we don’t want. Life school.
If Wisdom doesn't know, then that's not really Wisdom in my book. Wisdom is only present when awareness of all variables is matched to our most cherished outcomes.
Oh, Kelly, what a vulnerable sharing today! I knew exactly what you meant when you wrote, "My heart slammed." It's that gripping feeling, like it's being seized by fear or anxiety. And yet...when Billy was discovered (what a surprise--cats are clever and do the darndest things), you allowed your heart to expand again. And that's when the tears fell.
I think there's a prevailing assumption that openness means we don't believe anything or have convictions to stand on. In a polarized country, that's a hard virtue to cultivate--openness. In my experience, and what it seems is similar to yours from what you shared here today, it's quite the opposite. There is an intentionality to allowing yourself to be open. Openness, to me, is the gateway to experiencing the full spectrum of what it means to be human and fully alive. It's about receptivity.
How can we heal if we do not allow ourselves to be open and receptive?
My favorite part is you weeping in Walmart, recognizing the sadness you hadn’t allowed yourself to feel. If your intention was to help the reader open their heart, it worked, at least for one reader.
What questions do you ask yourself to open your heart? Where’s the instruction manual? Thank you for sharing this blip today and bringing my awareness to something that needs my attention desperately! If only I could access my magic wand to just open my own heart!
I understand open heart surgery is quite painful without anesthesia. ;)
---for me to be open is to hurt...I know there is the openness as Kelly described when your team wins or things go well, and the full opness is when there is pain, sadness, shame...all that icky stuff we are supposed to sit with too. It's not like actors in Hollywood who think of sad stuff to help themselves cry...rather it is more like thinking about what is most important to you and why it's important and then looking critically at the important stuff. As it begins to click in your heart and mind, there comes a moment when the pain comes to you...maybe loss, or thoughts of loss, but also there is the thinking of how these things or this thing is so important to you and you start to wonder if you deserve it or not, but you also feel like deserved or not, you still want it, no matter what. Maybe, in a way this is how it comes? That's my experience with feeling open. I hurts but its not a pain that tortures so much as a pain that sets value to the important stuff. ...Maybe I'm broken and not very smart on this, but that's how I think of it.
Actually, JC, I think you articulated that beautifully. The pain you’re describing is felt because we love something and don’t want to lose it but know we could at any moment and probably will someday. Then choosing to love it anyway. The best, best, best meditation on this is the movie Arrival.
That was a wild movie.
Great questions, Kate! In this situation, I was asking myself, “What is the pain I’m protecting against feeling, and am I willing to feel it instead of protecting against it?”
Regarding the instruction manual, I have been hard at work on that for the last two years. 😊 THE ROAD LESS TRIGGERED is scheduled to publish in March 2026!
Oh, man. This post had the Kelly magic of being the right words at the right time. Thankful for you and thankful that I somehow was led to you in this huge world and even huger internet. (Gonna have to figure out how I stumbled upon you…it was before Lovable, I believe.) I plan to do some journaling in response to this one. Glad Billy is safe and sound, and we are all rooting for Aidan. Wow is he learning so many life lessons in this chapter. I will pray that he keeps his heart as open as possible through it all, and that we all do.
Mary, you had me at Kelly Magic. You said everything that I was trying to articulate. My pastor once told me that the best sermons feel like they were curated just for you: Kelly Magic.
Thank you, Michelle. 🙏
Speaking of pastors, I really miss seeing you at church. We should get a cup of coffee sometime soon!
Mary, I just can’t explain to you what a tremendous blessing it is to have someone you’ve never met so sincerely rooting for you and the people you love. What a gift. Thank you for giving that to me today. Here’s to keeping our hearts open through it all!
Most people want freedom like they want abs, without doing any crunches. But emotional freedom? That’s Olympic-level vulnerability. You don’t just sip your morning coffee and arrive there. You open your ribs like cathedral doors and let both angels and raccoons waltz in.
That moment in Walmart? That’s sacred ground. Grief and relief holding hands in the fluorescent lighting aisle. Bless Billy, high priest of the Wheel Well Temple.
Thanks for reminding us that a fully feeling heart isn’t fragile. It’s feral and faithful.
WHOOP, there it is!
“You open your ribs like cathedral doors and let both angels and raccoons waltz in.”
“Grief and relief holding hands.”
“High priest of the Wheel Well Temple.”
And then the big one: “A fully feeling heart isn’t fragile, it’s feral and faithful.”
What an abundance of riches here, my friend, thank you!
WHOOP! There it is! "When your heart is open, you show up to the worst stuff in life with the best stuff inside you."
Deb, it’s great to hear from you! For those of you reading this and keeping score, Deb was the first (and only) participant in our first community call thirteen years ago. What a blessing that you’re still reading and sharing your WHOOPs with me.
Speaking of which, I’ve been telling Alek (also, in these comments) that he makes me think of you because his words always leave me with that WHOOP feeling!
"...It isn’t until something knocks the wind out of you that you have to be intentional about getting your breath back."
Geez man stop hurting me. I don't care about your dumb cat. I'm telling you it's not important to me so stop making me cry about my own kick to the chest over your inability to properly determine if an animal was in or around a vehicle for several hours. ....But, I do care about my children. In my layoff two weeks ago today, before my second attempt to pass a major exam (failed again), I sat alone in my house, children gone to camps, wife gone to be with her granny while her mother was with her sister (the younger sister, getting a lumpectomy)...I sat there alone...absorbing and dazed and then I sobbed. I sobbed so hard it scared our cat. He was lurking in hopes to grab a piece of my snack then stared at my wrinkled face with water streaming and my convulsing body and decided he didn't need to be there. He just curled up in a comfy spot to give me space...without totally running away. My thoughts were on my children. What if I couldn't find a new job, what if I couldn't match my salary even with a new job. What about the camps and the things I do to show love to my kids at Christmas. What will I do to help them smile and feel safe and comfortable. It was terrible. It still is. I'm already tired of trying to find a job, but I won't stop.
Then you come along and throw your words at me and I read them like a naive fool who seems to forget how you make all my tears come out, even in times past while I was sitting at work, or as Elijah sees his wife at her parents home.
I know what it's like to fall off the monkey bars in the 1980's during recess at the elementary school. Not the short ones for the "little" kids, the "big kid" ones. I know what it's like to land on your back on the dirt packed harder than bedrock. I know what it feels like to wonder not only, "will I ever breathe again", but "have I ever breathed before". That flash of, "maybe I die right here". I'm on the ground again. I'm having a hard time breathing. I wonder if I'll get to breathe anymore...if I ever was really breathing. I feel so much lately...so raw. I'm getting tired of feeling man. I'm so, so tired. I was already feeling things before the recent events of life. Little twinges of midlife psychology, knocking on the door, looking for consideration. Now this. Now your dumb article....sorry, my petulance is all I have in some measure of jest and feigned rebellion to feel any control at the moment.
I don't know what to do but I'm trying to do right things. I'm trying to apply faith, logistical smarts, sage wisdom from others who know this well, seeking support from family and friends. All of it. I have a lot you see. So much. I'm scared because, I wonder if I'm supposed to lose what I have. Am I supposed to be humbled back to the dirt...breathless...so that I find a new and better priority in life? Am I supposed to shed layers of things and stuff and comforts so I can finally be real and honest about what little I actually deserve in life? So I can stop being fake and be the lower version of myself? Or am I just supposed to stay some course that will be a shining new and better outcome I never could have imagined? Who knows...not me. God knows. I have trepidation aking Him just what He wants me to know. I think, or I thought I was aware of some things, but I'm really stewing in my doubtful juices of late and it's tough. Best I can muster for now is Mark 9:24 And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief. - I'm the man with children, hoping for their sakes an my own pathetic helpless feelings that a personal miracle can be worked, even though I'm not so great in my trust of the Lord. Not so great at believing like Thomas in John 20: 27-29.
JC, this is real and raw and I’m especially grateful for your willingness to share it with us. I deeply admire your willingness to open your heart in that recliner and to let the sadness out. In my experience, at this kind of midlife moment of reckoning, that isn’t just a one-off experience, but may need to happen repeatedly in the weeks and months ahead. It’s how we shed the identities we’ve been building for a lifetime, release the attachments to all the things we’ve convinced ourselves we need, and learn to move more nimbly again with just our soul to guide us into the next thing. It’s frustrating and scary and painful, but I believe in you, my friend. You’ve been wanting something new for so long now. You’ve got this. Something new is on the way!
You know what I said to my boss when he brought me the news? I need this. Thank you. I knew I wasn't going anywhere in this place and now I can just dedicate my time looking for the next right thing. He was floored. I don't regret anything so much as just feel very intimidated by the possibility of me doing something new and maybe even better. It's easy to daydream about better things, different things, but it's really hard to go live it.
Being aware of what I'm afraid of and addressing it helps me to be open hearted. Not being a slave to fear, especially the fear of any kind of suffering. As an empath I feel other people's pain. I can't take their pain away but I can walk beside them.
Beautiful, George, and a wonderful insight with regard to fear. I’ve taken to saying, “There’s no such thing as fear, there’s just pain I don’t want to feel.” What a blessing you are to walk alongside people in their fear and pain.
How deeply can our hearts be ripped open? This essay had me right there. 💔❤️🩹
May Aiden find comfort in being home with you, beloved Billy cuddled next to him, and Mom’s home cooked meals.
I hope his pain can be controlled and that he gets some inspiration for a few standup sets while convalescing.
Thank you, Teyani. 🙏
We’ve suggested to him that he’s assembling a pretty great origin story. 😊
The time here at home with him has been a great blessing, thank you so much for you benediction upon it!
"When your heart is open, you show up to the worst stuff in life with the best stuff inside you. On the other hand, navigating a crisis with a closed heart is like playing a guitar with mittens on—you lose your best ability to make something beautiful out of it."
How counterintuitive it feels to show up open-hearted to life's most difficult moments. It feels like too much to ask, even if it is Wisdom doing the asking.
I’m with you, Damon. And I wonder if Wisdom knows it’s too much to ask, which is why It gave us the ability to close our hearts. We’re free to do what we want when it hurts too much. Indeed, it may be the only way to discover that full freedom only comes from opening to what we don’t want. Life school.
True. Well said.
If Wisdom doesn't know, then that's not really Wisdom in my book. Wisdom is only present when awareness of all variables is matched to our most cherished outcomes.
Thank you for sharing your open heart with us.
Thank you for letting me share it with you, Gloria. 🙏
This hits right between the eyes (or is it the centre of the chest?) So much yes to this! ❤️
Oh, Kelly, what a vulnerable sharing today! I knew exactly what you meant when you wrote, "My heart slammed." It's that gripping feeling, like it's being seized by fear or anxiety. And yet...when Billy was discovered (what a surprise--cats are clever and do the darndest things), you allowed your heart to expand again. And that's when the tears fell.
I think there's a prevailing assumption that openness means we don't believe anything or have convictions to stand on. In a polarized country, that's a hard virtue to cultivate--openness. In my experience, and what it seems is similar to yours from what you shared here today, it's quite the opposite. There is an intentionality to allowing yourself to be open. Openness, to me, is the gateway to experiencing the full spectrum of what it means to be human and fully alive. It's about receptivity.
How can we heal if we do not allow ourselves to be open and receptive?
Unconditional,
to remain openhearted.
Powerful freedom.
My favorite part is you weeping in Walmart, recognizing the sadness you hadn’t allowed yourself to feel. If your intention was to help the reader open their heart, it worked, at least for one reader.