Lionheart Grief Coaching

Despite frequently being misattributed to Walt Whitman in pop culture, this quote stands alone as profoundly good advice. 

In a recent reference, Ted Lasso uses the quote as an important lesson about the assumptions we make about others and their consequences. It’s one of my favorite scenes in the whole show and certainly important advice for moving through this world in a healthy way.

Something we rarely think about is applying this same concept to ourselves, particularly when complex emotions come up. Often, we experience an emotion our culture deems “negative” and, immediately, we berate ourselves for having felt the emotion. We may even say to ourselves, “that’s bad. I’m bad.” 

What if instead of rushing to judge ourselves we got curious about why that feeling popped up? I find in my own practice, my more complicated emotions are signaling hurt, sadness, and longing. Certainly hard feelings to acknowledge or sit with, but incredibly important to the grief journey. 

Curiosity can often lead to self-compassion and awareness when we apply this quote to ourselves.