The Badass Arts of being sensitive without carrying the weight of the world.
This is for the sensitives. The empaths. The women who have been told they feel too much, too deeply, too rawly. The woman who walks into a room and notices the tension before anyone speaks. Who hears “I’m fine” and wonders what lives beneath it. Who struggles to watch the news because the suffering doesn’t seem to stay on the screen.
The highly sensitive woman who sometimes wakes with a heaviness she cannot quite explain, and who wonders whether her sensitivity is a gift, a burden, or both.
You know, the one with Bigly Feels. With emotional overwhelm. When the weight of what we feel, absorb, and carry becomes more than we have the capacity to process, leaving us mentally, emotionally, and sometimes physically exhausted.
Beloved Badass, being sensitive to the suffering of the world does not mean you were appointed to carry all of it. I’m saying this to you as much as I am to me. Our capacity to feel deeply is precious, and our emotions deserve attention, compassion, recognition. After all, it’s my belief that the divine speaks to us in many ways, including our emotions. Joy might say, more of this. Grief says, this mattered.
And as a Badass, you practice discernment. You can notice tension without knowing what it means. You can remain awake to the world without remaining on guard every moment of our life.
We are allowed to rest, even when the world is restless.
When caring becomes carrying
I have spent much of my life learning how to feel the world without allowing the world to consume me. Some days, I’m better at it than others. And perhaps the more humbling revelation is that even the woman who teaches others how to interrupt their patterns sometimes finds herself caught inside one.
“We are allowed to rest, even when the world is restless.”
I know how easily caring can become carrying. How quickly “I’m paying attention” can become “I cannot allow myself to look away.”
Somewhere in that crossing, rest begins to feel like neglect, or joy feels inappropriate, and putting down the phone feels like abandoning someone, or, truth be told, admitting the distraction of social media or the latest app is just the easiest way to avoid feeling those … say it together… Bigly Feels.
But what are we asking of ourselves if we refuse to slow down? Does worrying enough prove that we care? Is staying exhausted until there is nothing left to grieve a badge of honor in this go-go-go merry-go-round world we live in?
That is a bargain I cannot keep, and I invite my soul sisters to join me in asking an uncomfortable question: Who am I when I am not the one holding everything together?
Who are you?
The Badass Arts of putting something down
In The Badass Arts, we return to the Four Pillars of Purpose: laugh, learn, love, and labor. Please don’t think of these as four more things to accomplish; Rather, four choices to soothe your spirit when the day-to-day grind has zapped you of your badassery and life feels like one long obligation.
Laugh
Let something be funny. Despite the real suffering, there’s a space for embracing the quiet goodness too.
Tiny moments of Radical AWEpreciation are my lifeline. I feel the morning dew on the grass. I laugh at dinner gone bad (My most infamous meal is called Grey Ball Sack Chicken, and I will never live that down). I am ridiculous and goofy with my husband (to my children’s chagrin. One day, they’ll get it), and I delight in fluffy clouds and blue skies, with intention.
My joy - your joy - it deserves to be cultivated, fostered, embraced, like the badass gift it truly is.
Learn
I cannot underscore enough how impactful curiosity has been to healing hurts and leading the way. Some of my favorite questions are: What’s the question behind the question? What do I know? What am I imagining? Is there something useful I can do? Am I trying to solve something that is not mine to solve?
You don’t have to dismiss your sensitivity to question your interpretation. Sometimes the honest answer is, “I feel something, and I don’t yet know what it means.”
You are allowed to leave it there.
Love
Let your desire to care extend to YOU. Not after everyone else is settled. Not once you have become less complicated, less tired, or easier to accommodate.
You, now.
Love can sound like, “I care about you, and I can’t have this conversation tonight.” It can sound like asking for company instead of offering it. Letting someone bring dinner. Admitting that you don’t have the answer. You do not have to disappear inside your capacity to love.
Labor
Choose where your effort belongs. There may be a conversation to have, a meal to make, a cause to support, a practical thing you can do. Do that thing, if you can. And then let it have an ending. Because there will always be more work. That does not mean every remaining hour belongs to it. Some days, the most badass thing you can do is rest, recover, and rejuvenate rather than earn your way back into usefulness.
Because your life is also something worth caring for.
An invitation to rest
Today, choose one thing to put down. One conversation you do not have the capacity to hold. One round of checking the news. One responsibility you have quietly assumed without ever agreeing to it. Let the space remain unfilled for a little while.
Become the best napper you can be, just for you. Pause. Stop. Close your eyes. Give yourself permission to put the world down for a while.
Feel deeply. Care fiercely. Discern wisely. And rest like a badass.
If you would like support
I offer personal intensives for women who want support exploring patterns like these and making room for something different.
If you feel called for this kind of support, you’re welcome to reach out about a personal intensive to info@TheBadassArts.com.
