Okay to Feel

Taking care of myself means I’ve made a decision that it’s okay to feel. ~ Melody Beattie. The Language of Letting Go: Hazelden Meditation Series (p. 362).

It's okay...even desirable
to feel the feelings
that in my mind
for half-a-dozen decades
seemed to me to demand
I dull the feelings with food.
Now I know, eleven years
after the experience
I identify as my first day
in Recovery that it's okay...
actually indubitably preferable...
to feel my feelings,
experience them,
internalize them,
to taste them, bitter or sweet
rather than stuffing my face,
denying your humanity.
Don't tell me not to feel.
I worked so long to find my
emotions, to identify them,
to own them...I must now learn
how best to experience them.
I have learned that whining is not requited,
but neither is it wrong
unless the purpose
is to deny someone else
the right to feel their feelings.