Stop emotional bleeding

It pains me to see just how quickly we run to our first-aid kits when it comes to stitching up a finger or cleaning up an injured toe when we can actually spend decades neglecting a freshly bleeding heart.

Just because you can't always see emotional wounds bleeding from the outside - doesn't mean they are not hemorrhaging internally. 

But here's the thing: as tempting as it gets, you can't just bandage up an emotional wound with food, sex, alcohol or anything else you find expecting the bleeding to stop. 

And though there may be a million and one ways to bypass emotional pain, some even known to be 'spiritual', none will ultimately stop you from bleeding. 

Numbing, running, escaping, denying, hiding, transcending, and neglecting will only prolong suffering, eventually turning that unseen emotional wound into a chronic illness or physical disorder of some kind - visible not only to you but to many others.

To heal, we must return to our deep heart and stay rooted to what is most raw and real within us. We do have enough courage  to walk that path and our hearts know it. 

To heal, there must be both the readiness and intention to embrace the fullness of our felt experience and walk all the way to the edge of it, no matter how painful it gets; to touch the hurt from inside our bodies and sit with whatever demands to be heard, seen or met.

Not digging into the wound in a self-indulgent or masochist kind of way. But embracing it with the softness and gentleness of an open heart willing to face uncomfortable truths to discover what lies under it all.

Only then can the burdens of a past frozen within us begin to melt like sheets of ice on a sun-kissed lake.

And those core wounds transform into anchors perpetually grounding us to our luminous heart so that balance can be restored and love finally unlocked.