Out walking last week, and I am greeted with great gusto and enthusiasm by a small friend, on her way home from Kindergarten. On enquiring about my friend’s day, I am treated to the contents of my friend’s head, with no particular order or structure. Delightful and entertaining it is, but some helpful context from her mum allows me to understand that they have been talking about emotions that day.
At kindergarten.
I love a bit of emotional intelligence starting young.
She shows me a picture of her jar of emotions, full of yellow happy stickers. It contains a description of why she feels happy. She then struggles to fully articulate what it is she wants to say – she is little after all – but essentially, she is telling me that it is ok to have a jar of mixed emotions.
It is ok to feel lots of emotions all at once – to feel happy and sad at the same time.
A jar of mixed emotions.
This really gets me and I find that I am quite teary. Because it is that time of year, a time of huge transitions in the lives of many young people. At this time of year, I find that I write about change, emotions, and the impact of our young people’s lives on us as their parents, carers, friends. More here.
Our Younger Nearest-and-Dearest heads off to University this weekend.
We have many friends in a similar situation. It may be that you are in a season of change in your own life, whether it is you moving on or your young folk.
We posted our Elder Nearest-and-Dearest off a mere three years ago, and the memories of that are fresh.
If this is you for the first, second or umpteenth time, sending a loved one off on their adventures, my heart is with you.
My response to depositing our younger one at the start of her new life can most definitely be described as a jar of mixed emotions. I am so excited for her, for all that she is going to be experiencing, learning and creating. The course looks amazing and is a great fit for her, and she is ready for this next stage.
And…
I am going to miss her terribly, and I am aware of how much of a change this newly empty nest is going to bring to me.
I have stopped using the term ‘but‘ to connect ‘I am going to miss her..’ and ‘It is very exciting’. The two are not mutually exclusive. My small friend was a very timely reminder that we can experience multiple emotions all at once. We can indeed have a jar of mixed emotions.
This is perfectly acceptable.
The trick is to not judge, dismiss or try to silence any of those emotions but simply sit with them and let them be.
I have written before about the enormity of school transitions on our young folk and on ourselves, and the importance of feeling all the feelings associated with this. Sadness is an important component to our feelings jar, but we don’t always know what to do with it. Do please give yourself a few minutes to read these if you are feeling wobbly about your own child.
This week is full of assembling, packing, trips to Ikea and Lidl for the basics and staples required for living in self-catered halls, goodbyes and getting-readys. In the midst of this, I am hugely comforted by the wise words of Emily P Freeman from the prayer she wrote as she sent off her own teenagers to college. You can listen to that here, or read it here. It is only a few minutes but brings such comfort as she puts into words all those mixed emotions in your heart.
Whatever your position on faith, these words are such a gift:
May we feel the freedom to feel what we feel, without the pressure to be more happy, more sad or more anything other than simply who we are in this moment.”
Whatever is going on in your house this week, sit with your jar of mixed emotions and let yourself be who you are each moment.