You may not know this, but I get a fair amount of hate mail.

Which is surprising because I’m basically a sweet tender flower with no thorns and no opinions that could possibly offend ANYone.

(Just kidding!!!!  Can you hear my husband snorting? He describes me as his “spiky dinosaur.”)

Okay, the truth is that while some people love me and I love them, many folk are infuriated by my very existence. Plenty of people hate me upon first sight, before they even know all the good reasons why they should.

Some of that hate mail is easy to laugh off— like the guy who wrote on my Facebook wall last week, “Your a cheap con artist” [sic].

Some of it is well-intentioned but not helpful…like the people who explain to me that by charging actual money for spiritual things, I am lowering the vibration of the whole world and HOW DARE I support my family.

And most of it my assistant just deletes before I even read it.

But every now and then, I get a mail that turns my stomach.

These are usually disguised as loving, kind, “feedback” emails.

That’s because “light workers” who haven’t done their own healing work first are some of the most dangerous people out there, in my opinion…but that’s another post for another day.

Have you ever run into that? Where someone who’s super “spiritually enlightened” says something “loving” and probably uses the word “attracting” or “energy” and has a big sweet smile on their face while they shoot poison darts into your tender heart?

Yeah, me too.

In fact, just last week I got an email last week from someone who was FURIOUS at me— just livid— who made a point of telling me that she was a trained coach— and proceeded to say, in essence, “You’re a cheap con artist.” Much like my charming gentleman friend, above, but with better punctuation.

I wrote her back, then deleted her from my list immediately.

Because boundaries, folks.

People don’t get to come into your living room, spew bile all over the place, and then get to stay to dinner.

And in my head I composed the livid rant I was going to send you today. About boundaries. About not putting up with bullshit. About how NOT to get what you want. About how NOT to ask someone for a favor and then ream them in the same breath. (Shocker: they’re probably not going to do you that favor.)

But by the time it was time to sit down and write it, all the steam coming out of my ears had dissipated.

She wrote me an apologetic email saying she thought maybe she had overreacted. But that wasn’t why the steam dissipated.

The emotional charge went away for two reasons.

Reason #1 was because I had taken the action I needed to create a boundary between myself and that angry energy that was directed at me but clearly wasn’t actually about ME.

Reason #2 was because I just let myself be royally pissed off for a good couple of hours after I read her email, responded, and removed her from my list.

Let’s talk about this one, because it’s a wee bit scandalous.

Instead of coaching myself out of my feelings, I gave myself permission to feel all my un-evolved, self-righteous, fiery furious feelings.

I let myself be a cathedral, and I gave all those un-pretty parts of myself permission to just burn their fiery selves as long as they needed.

The funny thing was, of course, that once they had permission to be there and room to breathe, they flared up bright and hot for about….an hour. I ranted to my husband. I texted a couple friends who also deal with this sort of horseshit.

And then? It was done. It was over. The hot feelings flamed out and turned into a clear, bright light that showed me some things.

This is the counter-intuitive thing about feelings. Most people squash them down because they’re afraid that their terrible scary feelings will devour them. But the squashing down only makes them more intense, and when they’re under all that pressure, they’re even more likely to spurt out in unintended places.

But when you give yourself permission to just HAVE those feelings, they move through you.

I keep learning this lesson over and over, by the way.

And I got to learn it again this week.

I said to myself the line we say to our kids, which is:

“You get to have ALL your feelings, but you have to have them in a way that is safe.”

[bctt tweet=”“You get to have ALL your feelings, but you have to have them in a way that is safe.”” username=”@sitatmytable”]

We tell them that their feelings can be as big as they want, but they have to have them in a way that is safe for them and for the people around them.

You can scream in your room, but not at the dinner table. You can whack pillows, but not people. You can wail as long as you want…but not where your siblings are watching the family movie.

This is a pretty good rule for grownups, too.

I think more of us need safe spaces in which to have our big, messy feelings, and I’m pondering on how I can create those spaces for you. (Stay tuned; I’m excited about some new love offerings!)

When we can let ourselves have our biggest, wildest feelings, they start to move and transform. As I let myself feel my anger, I realized that I wasn’t really even angry at this one woman.

But I was angry.

I’m angry at a coaching industry that churns out “helpers” who haven’t been helped themselves first.

I’m angry at an online culture that enables nasty, anonymous poison pens.

I’m angry at women turning on each other instead of standing shoulder to shoulder against patriarchal systems and misogynistic bullshit.

I am livid about the political disaster happening in my country.

The penny dropped.

Ahhhhh, yes, I am INDEED angry about those things.

For a moment, I had been truly angry at that one woman, too. And if I hadn’t taken action to set a clear boundary with her AND felt those intense feelings, I might still be angry. But once I had taken care of myself, it was over. Done.

But the bigger anger?

The anger that revealed itself when I let myself feel my way all the way through the petty anger instead of trying to rise above or talk myself out of it?

That was good clean fuel.

Big, bright, luminous dragon fire that reminded of who I am and what I care about in this world, and what I want my work to do for people.

That fiery energy sent me right back to my laptop, pounding out ideas for programs, essays, and resources to help the wise women of the world show up like the strong, fierce epic fucking badasses that you truly are.

So stay tuned, dearheart. My creative juices are flowing again, and I am bursting with ideas! Oooooh, I can’t wait to share them with you!

Because the kindred spirits—that’s you—are also epic fucking badasses.

Even if you don’t know it yet.

And we have work to do.

much love,

Katherine

[et_bloom_inline optin_id=optin_9]