Videos That Make Me Cry (Find Your People Who Get You)

Lessons of Light Issue #20

If this post resonates, please click the heart at the top or bottom of this email. 💙

This is a story about what happens when we let ourselves be seen and the power of community.

Last week I was feeling the feelings.

After publishing an article here on Substack (The Beautiful Sadness: How to Have Faith Over Fear When Sometimes All I Feel is … Fear), I had a vulnerability hangover. After publishing, I thought to myself, “What have I done? I let myself be seen too much.”)

I had that feeling of wanting to cry – but the cry was stuck in my throat. You know that feeling? That tightness in the middle of the throat. Like something wants to be released, but it can’t.

I got in the car with my daughter to do some errands together and said, “Piper, this sadness is stuck in my throat. It’s so tight.” She told me that she knew that feeling and said, “If you don’t get it out now, it’s going to come out later at a time when you don’t want it to come out.”

After our quick trip into the dry cleaners, I was still feeling the tightness. I needed to get it out. I said to Pipey, “Do you have any videos of dogs and babies and things like that’ll make me cry?”

She said, “Hold on.”

I continued driving as she was in the passenger seat looking through her phone, until she said, “Pull over.”

I pulled over to the side of the road, put it in park, and glanced over at her phone. She had a folder open on Instagram titled: Videos That Make Me Cry.

“You have a whole folder?!,” I asked. Brilliant, I thought.

She brought up the first one and said, “Here, watch this.”

We sat together, close, shoulder to shoulder, and watched one after another.

And… we cried together. Many tears and exclamations of “oh!” and “that’s so sweet!” and “oh my god, I can’t take it.” Because our hearts felt it all.

And then, just like that, we were done.

There was a full release. It felt like relief.

The tightness in my throat no longer.

I thought it was brilliant that Piper had this folder because we all have those moments where we simply need to let our tears flow. To get out what feels like is locked inside.

Sometimes we need to pull up a folder of Videos That Make Me Cry.

Sometimes we need someone to cry with us.

And, sometimes we need a folder of Videos That Make Me Laugh because we need to find ways to laugh, too, when there is so much around us that feels heavy and dark.

It’s both/and.

This is Community

After publishing that piece, the response I’ve received has been like no other piece I’ve written. People said, “Thank you for sharing this, I’ve been feeling the same way,” or this is “so universal in terms of what is happening NOW to so many in so many different ways!” or “though we may have different paths or paintings, we have similar thoughts, doubts, fears...” and “I'm having a different kind of struggle than you, but yet the same.”

I see the power of community – being surrounded by like-minded people who are here to mirror each other. To share our hearts, our resources, our ideas.

As Edith Wharton wrote, “There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”

Last week I was reminded about this line in The Freedom Transmissions (page 133), that we are “Shepherds holding the Light for both the lambs and those ready to become shepherds.”

We are all shepherds for each other, holding the light for each other, helping each other come home.

Wherever you are on your journey, keep going. If you need someone to talk to, reply to this email. If you need to cry, I’ll find some videos to share with you. If you need to laugh, we can do that too.

Together, we are a collective.

💙 You heard it here first: I’m creating The Freedom Transmissions book club, with the blessing of Carissa. JOIN THE WAITLIST HERE to be the first to know.

This week, I recommend listening to Ep. 12 The Freedom of Be-ing (The Freedom Transmissions) on Hold the Light.