The Courage to Feel
“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” — Joseph Campbell
Two months ago, I wrote about love and joy being acts of defiance. Today, I want to talk about something that might seem contradictory but is actually the foundation of that defiance: the courage to feel everything.
We live in a culture that prizes emotional avoidance. “Stay positive.” “Don’t dwell on the negative.” “Just move on.” But here’s what I’ve learned in my years of trauma work, and what my recent move from Washington to Vermont has crystallized for me: avoiding our feelings is actually the path of least resistance. Feeling fully is the revolutionary act.
The Illusion of Easy
When we push down grief, anger, fear, or pain, it feels like we’re being strong. It feels like we’re moving forward. But we’re actually choosing the path that keeps us small—reacting from old wounds instead of responding from wisdom.
True courage isn’t the absence of fear. It’s feeling the fear completely and choosing love anyway. It’s letting ourselves grieve fully so we can access joy fully. It’s welcoming anger as information about our boundaries rather than something shameful to suppress.
What Moving Taught Me About Courage
Leaving Washington for Vermont wasn’t just a geographical shift—it was an invitation to feel everything I’d been avoiding about change, uncertainty, and starting over. The anxiety about leaving the familiar. The grief for what I was leaving behind. The excitement mixed with terror about what lay ahead.
I could have numbed through the transition, staying busy with logistics and lists. Instead, I chose to feel it all. And in that feeling, I found something extraordinary: my feelings weren’t trying to stop me; they were trying to inform me.
The anxiety held wisdom about what I truly valued. The grief honored what had been meaningful. The excitement pointed toward my authentic desires. When I stopped fighting my feelings and started listening to them, they became my guides rather than my enemies.
The Body Remembers What the Mind Forgets
This is where Advanced Integrative Therapy comes alive. Trauma doesn’t just live in our thoughts—it lives in our bodies, our nervous systems, our cellular memory. And traditional talk therapy, while valuable, often can’t reach these deeper layers where our survival patterns are stored.
Through ReConnective Therapy (RCT) and Homeopathy, we can access these deeper layers safely. RCT helps integrate and repattern old emotional and energetic so healing doesn’t all have to be done consciously. Homeopathy works with your body’s own healing wisdom, supporting integration at the deepest levels.
This isn’t about forcing yourself to feel everything at once—that’s retraumatization, not healing. It’s about creating enough safety in your system that you can feel gradually, fully, and with support.
The Difference Between Feeling and Drowning
Here’s the fear that keeps most people stuck: “If I start feeling, I’ll never stop. I’ll be overwhelmed. I’ll fall apart.”
But there’s a profound difference between drowning in your feelings and swimming through them. Drowning happens when we’re alone, when we don’t have the tools, when our nervous system is dysregulated. Swimming happens when we have support, when we understand that feelings are temporary visitors, not permanent residents.
Feelings want to be felt, not fixed. When we give them space to move through us, they naturally complete their cycle. When we resist them, they get stuck and grow stronger.
The Revolutionary Choice
Every time you choose to feel instead of avoid, you’re choosing evolution over stagnation. You’re choosing authenticity over performance. You’re choosing the path that leads to genuine love and joy—not the artificial kind that requires constant maintenance, but the kind that emerges naturally from a system that’s no longer fighting itself.
This is the work I’m passionate about supporting. Because on the other side of your deepest feelings aren’t more feelings—it’s freedom. It’s the ability to respond rather than react. It’s the capacity to love fully because you’re no longer afraid of pain.
Ready to Find Your Courage?
If you’ve been avoiding parts of yourself out of fear, you don’t have to face them alone. My integrated approach combining trauma work with homeopathy and RCT creates a container safe enough for you to feel everything and strong enough to support you through the process.
Healing isn’t about becoming someone new—it’s about becoming who you’ve always been underneath the protection patterns. It’s about reclaiming your full emotional range so you can access your full power.
Book a session today or reach out for a free consultation. Let’s explore what becomes possible when you stop running from your feelings and start running toward your freedom.
From my new home in Vermont, where the hills and mountains remind me daily that the most beautiful landscapes are shaped by forces that seemed destructive at the time—
