BIG FEELINGS

One of the greatest gifts our daughters’ wise and beloved preschool teacher gave our family long, long ago is the concept of “big feelings.” It’s kind of like a child’s version of being verklempt, that sense of feeling overcome with emotion, but often not knowing why or what to do about it. The nifty thing about it is that my husband and I quickly appropriated it as well. Big feelings don’t stop with puberty or even adulthood. All through life we have “big feelings” that we don’t know quite how to handle, and the gift is in giving ourselves permission to have them. I’m not advocating full-blown meltdowns or tantrums, but rather just allowing our children, and ourselves, the psychic space to be sad, upset, angry, moody, to be heard if that’s validating, or to have room to be left alone to simply FEEL. Healthy catharsis is underrated…