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What is in your heart?


My biggest love of therapy is that my clients share what is in their hearts. In Indonesia they have a term for this, Curhat, which translates to the out pouring of one's heart. There it is very common to use this phrase in daily life. Our culture does not honor this process in quite the same way. In many ways, we feel a need to hide what is truly in our hearts.

If we feel sad, we feel the need to wear a smile. We feel we need to "be strong" and "suck it up". We feel mortified if we so much as shed a single tear in front of another person. If we feel angry, we often hold it in. If we feel afraid or anxious, we rarely let that be known.

Our true hearts have many defenses attached to them. At times we may feel as if our true selves risk the many masks we present to the world. It is hard to really connect with people when our hearts are so defended. When we are unable to really see one another.

I am terrible at small talk, I find it lacking in something: whether it be meaning, depth or truth. It's a way of connecting that just does not come naturally to me. I am naturally attracted to truly authentic emotions. I feel it is an honor to witness someone in their pain, revealing their fears and their insecurities and their real thoughts. It's when I feel we are finally able to connect.

Pain is a thread we connect on. Our pain is what makes us strong, not our masking of it. We are all over it when someone comes forward and shares their real feelings about something personal. We feel it in our hearts and we can finally say out loud "me too". Keeping ourselves in the dark behind our defenses does not keep us safe. It makes us alone. It makes us isolated.

Our masks that we project and spend so much time maintaining do not speak of authentic beauty. Our hearts do. No defenses in the world could ever replicate the kind of real, authentic beauty that is within us. If you want to make the world beautiful again, be more like the Indonesians. Ask someone what is in their heart. And really listen.

We allow the light to come into our wounds when we open up. Like windows where we have kept the blinds shut, hoping no one could see through them. We realize when they are drawn upwards that we were actually keeping ourselves in.

I said: What about my heart? He said: Tell me what you hold inside it? I said: Pain and sorrow. He said: Stay with it. The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”

― Rumi


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