I am a feeler. I feel all the things, all the time.

One of my first deeply emotional memories was a mix of happy and sad. My family was on vacation and we, all seven of us, were riding in a surry, a golfcart size thing that is peddled like a bike, happily peddling and riding along all together. I remember being so happy and then an instant later really really sad. A voice popped into my head “it won’t always be this way.” I wondered if my intuition knew that my parents would get divorced at some point, but now I realize that I was just having a very normal reaction to deep joy.

I’m a crier too. Happy tears, mad tears, sad tears. I’ve cried them all.

I recently got teary in a staff meeting at work when I was presenting to our division on the success of a big project I led.

When I was a teacher, I cried in front of my class one day because my kids were working in groups and it was just so great and special.

Last month, I started bawling at a Carrie Underwood concert when she sang a song that always gets me. When she sang the lyrics “with your daddy’s eye, what a sweet surprise” I started sobbing, head in my hands, leaned over and my friend started rubbing my back in comfort and then pulled me into her arms and told me people were staring.

I’ve cried during yoga classes and during the street-brawl punch move in Body Combat.

I almost lost my shit about a project at work in the fall. I was ranting and raving to a colleague when we took a walk to get coffee and was so distracted by my anger about how stupid this project was and how frustrated I was that I didn’t know how to make the changes to the art in Photoshop that I almost left the coffee shop without paying.

I cried in church all the time as a kid. If I didn’t cry during mass, I likely cried in the car on the way home.

When my family dropped me off at college, oh my god, there were so. many. tears.

To be honest, I love all of this. I love feeling so deeply and I love crying. I wasn’t always comfortable with my very intense feelings, and honestly, I’m still working on owning some of the more negative ones.

Overall though, I’ve learned that my emotions can be a gift to the world. I hope they are. I hope that in sharing my experiences and my feelings that others feel permission to feel theirs as well.