In the Cave (sample)

Which emotion do you get penalized for experiencing? Anger? Sadness? Loneliness? Who forbids it: your partner? Friend? Child? How: Do they shush you or ask if you’ve ever heard of a “pity party”? Do they tell you to count your blessings or say “at least you”? What toll does it take on you, what added emotion?

Our world is full of loved ones who can make it hard to be our full selves, to experience and express the full range of our emotions. When we turn against ourselves we make their lives a little easier, and ours a little more difficult. But what if, like Chemaly asks, we were allowed not only to feel our difficult feelings, but to express them? Imagine a world in which you got to feel what you feel without disappointing anyone. What if we got to stay on our own side?  

Now imagine a world that welcomes your forbidden emotion, where your feeling is not just allowed to exist—tolerated—but it’s seen, accepted, held. For now, we are only imagining, but the long-term goal of Chemaly and others is to fashion this world, the one that celebrates the full range of our emotions.