Simply Alanis Morissette
When I’m really, really angry, if I’m privileged enough to be next to someone who can hold my anger, I’ll definitely take them up on holding the bucket. I just woke up this morning filled with anxiety. Some of it born from my hormonal moment, but I just woke up thinking, Okay, I’m really, really scared—I’m going to go all the way into that fear. When I didn’t resist it anymore, everything got much better. The whole idea of emotions being something we can’t escape as humans, but that deep suffering that comes from resisting them, we can move out of that just by not resisting anymore. But it takes a really brave warrior soul to sit there in these emotions that admittedly don’t feel good in the body. It doesn’t feel good for me to be in deep grief. It’s not my favorite.
Maranda Pleasant : It’s not my favorite, either.
Alanis Morissette : Watching my son right now—how stunning it is to watch him. He’s two and three months old. Watching the waves of emotion that move through him and beholding him in them, literally sometimes holding him in them—my validating and emphasizing his bevy of emotions that moves through like currents every ten seconds, my offering this to him has actually taught me how to offer it to myself. I’m much better at giving it to him, incidentally. But it’s becoming habitual now. When emotion or feeling presents itself, I would move toward it with a little bit more of a sense of curiosity and inquiry versus, Oh shit—I have to run away from this through shopping or eating or having a cocktail or whatever the yummy fun thing.
