Love Feels Hard

I am noticing, in big and small ways, that I don't recognize myself much these days.

I asked a stylist friend of mine to help me feel like myself again in the way that I look. Also, a couple months ago I started with a personal trainer twice a week to help me feel strong. My husband and I traveled to Paris because I've loved it there before, and I wanted a really immersive experience, a shock to the system. All of these things have been helpful and intrinsically rewarding. And still, here I am, just not quite myself. Then again, looking back, doing each of those things, they were all actions. I know the work that I need to do, and I'm trying to avoid doing it because it's inherently uncomfortable understanding the thoughts that are creating what I'm feeling. I really want to avoid those feelings. So I've been putting this off.

Here's a coaching reflection on what I just shared and what I wrote is “why? Why is it that I want to avoid that?” When I look at that question, my answer is, “because I'm scared that those answers are going to show me that I have to change things that I treasure so much about my life right now: my time with my kids, marital amicability, financial stability, and predictability, which means safety to my primal brain.” So my coaching reflection here is a recognition that those things feel scarce and fragile. My brain's answer is, “fuck yeah, they do. I feel like everything could go sideways at any moment. And that is terrifying. We've seen it. It's totally possible and maybe even probable.” I also know in my coaching mind that these are thoughts and not truths, but I'll circle back to it. 

What I want to do now is juxtapose these current automatic thoughts with what they may be showing me that I want instead. So, what changes do I want? What do I think I'm ready to explore more of, and why? 

I'm thinking back to this story. I go to a massage therapist, and she's amazing. If you're in Mobile, it's Denise Walker at Full Circle. She rested her hand over my belly, and I found myself crying. She said it was an emotional release, and that we all hold tension in different spots. She taught me that it was my diaphragm. I didn't know that it stretched across the entirety of my abdomen, so I started researching the diaphragm and the method that Denise used. She cited the Rosen method, so I went to Amazon and got a book called Rosen Method Bodywork, and I've been reading it slowly. Then, this section hit home for me. I'm going to show you guys an excerpt from it. The woman who created this method is talking about her discovery of this method, and some of the things that she discovered as she was standing up in this practice and doing her research.

This is what Rosen said: “I noticed that when people began to let go even more deeply in their abdomens, they seemed to become in touch with a love that they had never felt before. Why is this feeling buried so deep down in the body? I think it is the most precious feeling that we have, and we are so vulnerable around it that we protect it the most. I hear many stories of people putting out their love toward their families and being hurt and rejected. In the end, they're afraid to let their love show and bury it as deeply as possible. It seems to be the last feeling they allow to come up, and it only happens when both the diaphragm and abdomen relax completely. A trust has to develop first, and then surrender, in order for the diaphragm to have its full movement. When this happens, then the love comes out too. The love is not connected to a certain object or a certain experience. Rather, it is people's innate, loving beginning to surface.”(Rosen 31). 

So here's my coaching reflection: When do I most clearly remember the feeling of love in the way that she mentions it here, and for myself? I felt most like myself as a young person, the most intensely that I've ever felt love was me back then. I felt alive and in love with everyone. I felt in love with God, in love with my body, and in love with love itself. I was all about rom-coms all day long, I felt love deeply for others, to the point where I would spontaneously cry just for love and celebration at seeing others living their lives and being themselves in random moments, like the airport and the grocery store. Just watching people would move me to the point of tears, and I felt grounded in my love for my family, and in the love that I felt for them. I felt love, I felt certainty, and I felt clear. 

In reflection, there's something here for me to understand more, especially as an executive coach who works with clients on reflection work. It is my abdomen, that's larger than my frame, and high up to where the diaphragm is. So much so that I often get asked if I'm pregnant. It's my abdomen that hurts when I eat or drink wine, which I know is one of the ways that I like to buffer, numb out, and avoid hard emotions. It's also love that I couldn't create. A few years ago, when I was traveling for the first time after the pandemic, I saw so many people disregarding the safety protocols that were in place. I felt vulnerable, scared, and I couldn't get to that love. I recognized that it wasn't accessible to me, and my thoughts in that moment (and in reflection on my day-to-day), I see that I've been interpreting it as love that puts me at risk for pain, over and over again. Like feeling too much means that you're weak, like crying with professional peers or at work, having my voice tremble, being told to take a minute and get myself together, or not be so emotional. Loving, or valuing others above outcomes is also a liability and a threat to my income and status within corporate consulting, like when I had to make commendations or promotion denial decisions, like having one of my first boyfriends tell me he was into somebody else, and I wasn't enough. 

That intense love that I felt in that moment wasn't enough. That love hurt me in the end. Having so much love made that hurt all that much more intense. Like the miscarriages where I loved those little cells, named them, and talked to them. That love wasn't enough, either. Like when I give, do, or serve in my love language, and it's not what my family values, or it doesn't matter to them. Not in the same way, at least. Like not being understood or loved back in the same way, or love language by those that you're closest to, including friends and family. Like seeing those who exemplified and taught me love, make weird and wrong and terrible decisions, or have horrifying opinions, or turn around and exemplify so much of what I see as wrong in the world, like seeing political disagreements create literal lines of separation in my family and among friends, or like my own indictment here, of being the one to draw the lines and separate myself from those that I have loved.

All right, here's a coaching reflection. If you've ever coached one-on-one with me, you know that I love homework. So this is my homework for myself, and feel free to work with me if you find yourself in a similar situation. I'm going to ask these three questions. 

• Where have I not shown love to myself? What does love feel like? How do I know when I feel it physically and emotionally? 

• What does love feel like? 

• If I lived in love, what would be different in my day-to-day, and even doing this reflection up until this point? 

Here's one of the things that I've started as an experiment: I've updated my daily prayer. I have a daily prayer that, when I do it, it always hits for me. It's like a focus meditation, but I use it like a conversation with God. I’ll say, “thank you God for this, your day, this, your life, and this, your precious family, and this, your love. Help me, God, to honor you, to bring you joy, and to create love with everything I say, do, think, and intend. Help me, and help us all, please, to fully realize and wholly embody your purpose and love in this life and in this day.

If you’d like to book a discovery call to learn how coaching can help you lead well and live well, book your call here: 

Or you can always reach out to me directly at tarah@tarahkeech.com.