avoir le blues

To have the blues

I have come to accept that deep inside my spirit, there will always be this sadness. She’s in there, and I can’t ignore her. I think of her as a chic French woman, dressed in all black, her je ne sais qouis floating around her like the musk from her cigarette. If you don’t know ‘je ne sais qouis’ is a French idiom that represents an indescribable feeling. It emphasizes mystery, and mystique, an element French people emanate. I wouldn’t classify myself as a francophile but I went to Paris when I was ten and it changed my life.

Sometimes like the human I am, I pretend this French mistress doesn’t exist. I try and push her away when she is clearly there, her smoke traveling from my gut to my throat. Sometimes I can swallow and choke her back down. But other times, it is all-consuming, and I find myself in a coughing fit I cannot control.

Even though she is always there, I know I can have insane happy moments and generally an uplifting and light demeanor. When I properly acknowledge her, I can be in that emotional balance of not hindering myself from feeling.

Maybe you're tired of me talking about how much I feel, but this is how I relate to the world and always have. I was never someone who could just float around and go from one thing to the next with ease. I have to grieve often, I put my whole being into something. I can’t half-ass a n y t h i n g. This I believe is the reason why I feel so deeply because I have to invest all of myself in all parts of my life.

But recently, I have been in that coughing fit. I have felt unbalanced, ungrounded, distanced from myself, distanced from nature. Out of rhythm.

I was not embracing the sadness. The sadness within is part of me. Contrary to popular belief, sadness doesn’t always have to be a muted feeling. It doesn’t have to be shrinking yourself down in the hands (and words) of others. It doesn’t have to be a blur. Sadness can be vibrant.

I find this vibrancy in my sadness by allowing my French mystique to shine through. I truly embody her. Why not? How come we are drawn to playing dress up in childhood and playing pretend? Playing different characters? With every princess, there is a witch. Every happily~ever~after with a curse. There cannot be one without the other.

Secretly, I am on a mission to make the title of a witch a good thing, a compliment, a satisfying entity, because it always has been for me. (Ainsley, this part is for you) Being a witch to me is being fearlessly you, a balance of the energies inside you, a trust in your intuition, and working with the elements of nature as they were intended (with respect).

To play into the sad French mistress bit, I see French women carry themselves in a certain way. They are confident in the way they walk, and how they talk. They are always the ones being chased: by men, by jobs… not like that’s the epitome of life, but just represents how they hold themselves and their value. Everything they do is poetic and a work of art. This, of course, is the idealized version and NOT every woman. I’m just generalizing for the vibe.

How can you be glamorous in your sadness or any other feeling that isn’t recognized as productive by society, while simultaneously not glamorizing it?

We aren’t letting this be the end all be all. We welcome the flow of life. We welcome the lessons this sadness is bringing. We allow ourselves to feel sad and name it. I’ve said this a lot recently but haven’t explained it. It can be challenging to

1. Say things out loud. Like our bodies literally try to prevent us from saying a word or phrase. This is because your brain and body are trying to protect you from past experiences and traumas. Your brain thinks: “Hey I’ve had this thought before and now I correlate it to anxiety: heavy breathing, rapid heart rate, fight, flight, freeze, fawn). So now something similar is coming up, it must be ____!”

2. Know and understand how you feel. Especially if you aren’t in tune with yourself at the moment, which is so normal and understandable.

3. Sympathize with yourself and feel compassion. Be gentle. We all hold ourselves to these incredible inconceivable standards of being. It can be illogical. Unsafe, even.

So, when I say name how you feel, this takes the feeling out of your brain and into your body, where then you can move through it. Have you ever been riddled with anxiety and overthinking? You can’t move or you move too quickly and then the second you say to a friend, “I don’t feel good”, or you admit it to yourself, you break down in tears? It is the last moment when a portal opens and you can express yourself in the way you were meant to. What is the point of being here if you don’t recognize and express yourself? I think that’s the core of our human existence. To feel, and then share how we feel. It’s my core value as a social worker. Connecting through feeling.

Moving through the feeling means that you do cry, or you dance, or you book that spin class fifteen minutes before it starts and push yourself farther than you ever had on a bike. I did that last Wednesday and it felt great. Do you know why? Not just because of endorphins, but because I changed my location, got out of that freeze state, and went to a space where I knew I would be forced to be present in my body.

So please know, that because you are sad, there is an opposite feeling waiting for you at any moment that counterbalances. You can feel joy as deep as the ocean goes and as long as the river flows. You love just as much, and your sadness is reminding you of that. That you care.

Thank you all for letting me express myself here. It has been so helpful for me, but it makes my DAY when you share how it has been helpful for you.

Abundant blessings ∞

-madison renee katherine

Tell me how you feel here