Tomorrow is the 4th of July, and many of us will be making plans with family, meeting friends, watching fireworks, eating hot dogs... the whole nine yards. As I sit here thinking about this holiday, I keep coming back to a different kind of liberation altogether.
Lately, I've been thinking about how we're expected to go through the motions and put on a happy face when the world feels heavy. We're supposed to show up and celebrate with a smile, even when our hearts are somewhere else entirely.
As someone who feels things deeply (and yes, I've been called "too emotional" more times than I can count), I've learned that feeling is how we process life, not something to hide or rush past. It's okay not to feel 100% celebratory all the time.
Thereโs a song by Saint Finnikin called Overwhelm that captures this experience so beautifully. It starts in that familiar place of heaviness and then shifts toward the possibility of letting ourselves process, rather than pushing it all down. The line that hit me most:
You can't remove the pain if you refuse it, so show me how you use it.
Emotional independence isn't about being self-sufficient or never needing support. It's about claiming the right to your full range of human experience and refusing to shrink yourself to make others comfortable.
This long weekend, I hope you find time to ask yourself:
How am I, really?
Your feelings arenโt too much. Your depth isnโt a burden. These are the very things that make you capable of profound connection, authentic growth, and genuine joy. ๐ค
So this Independence Day, corny as it might sound, I invite you to claim your right to feel everything, process it fully, and transform it into something meaningful.
Hope your 4th of July is everything you need it to be. ๐บ๐ธ
I'm a big feeling guy too. And I agree that it's important to acknowledge the feelings rather than try and bury them in the sand or sweep them under a rug. But to your point, there can also be good that comes out of that acknowledgement.
Also, fun fact - I had no idea that if you embedded a Spotify song in a newsletter, it would play like that. That's cool.
You're brilliant everywhere!