Feeling Your Feelings: Read ‘Ensouling Language’ by Stephen Buhner September 22, 2014 • 2 Comments One of the most worthwhile things I have re-discovered these past few years is to allow, trust and honor feelings and emotions. In my other life, I felt things, but I would push those feelings as far away as possible. I did not live an inhabited life before everything fell apart, I lived at the edge, peering in. For me, “feeling” was uncomfortable and meant facing inconvenient truths. In Stephen Buhner’s book, Ensouling Language: On the Art of Nonfiction and the Writer’s Life, he writes: To write inhabited words, to live an inhabited life, it is crucial to leave the certainty of dry land, to step into something liquid and moist, to immerse the self in the deep interior life that flows beneath the shallow surface of reason. And the key to this, to finding that deep interior life, is feeling. (pg. 37) When the veneer of your life is ripped off and you are naked, feelings rush in like a life raft (or an anchor, should you ignore them) and provide a compass that will gently guide you from the darkness and into the light. At least that has been my experience. Ensouling Language is not a book about recovering from loss. It is a beautifully written book about how to truly be alive with “aware intentfulness” that’s disguised as a book about writing. I cannot do it justice. I can only hope to learn from Mr. Buhner, and, if I am lucky one day, to write with such eloquence. I include it here because it is inspiring to read even if you have no aspirations to be a writer. Read it just to learn how to feel again, like you did when you were a child. Read it so you can overthrow the part inside that has, “grown accustomed to the slum our consciousness has become.” Read it so you can live an inhabited life. May you be blessed and protected always. -db Who is Dianna Bonny? Hi, my name is Dianna Bonny. It’s my mission to candidly share my journey with you. For me, it’s all about the healing: to create a radiant healing energy for others who have befallen a similar fate. Together, we can forge beautiful lives of belonging and connection. Thanks for joining me today! I look forward to hearing from you.