The Pursuit of Awe as a Healing Practice

Hi, my loves,

Reading is on my pleasure list. It’s one way I experience awe, which has taken on a very literal meaning. Over the past week, I zeroed in on the use of the word “awe” in the books I was reading.

The word first caught my eye while finishing Life in Five Senses by Gretchen Rubin, which you can read about HERE.

Awe is an intensely gratifying emotion.

Gretchen Rubin – Life in Five Senses

This sentence inspired me to finally write my first blog post at Belle-Awe. I felt a lightbulb go off as an answer to what I have been looking for in my self-care practices. I was missing a sense of awe. Even as I explored and remained curious, I was missing that feeling of wonder and satisfaction of experiencing awe.

Today, the word changed my life again.

I was finishing What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing From Complex Trauma by Stephanie Foo when the word awe caught my eye.

“How did you do this? How did you persuade someone to commit themselves to your crazy ass? I’d ask myself. And then, in awe: At last, somebody wants to take care of you. Somebody loves you so much. Somebody wants to stay.”

I had just happily read about the author’s engagement, only to find my own bit of wonder at her use of the word awe at her revelation on experiencing love. I knew this was something to pay attention to. Awe showed up again a bit later during her therapy sessions with Dr. Ham, a psychologist at Mount Sinai. This time, awe was attributed to what Foo thought Dr. Ham was feeling.

It was fascinating to read their therapy process. It was didactic and dialectical in nature. Dr. Ham is noted as saying, “You have to be aware of how big a power difference there is between patient and therapist. And if you really want to work effectively with people, you have to keep surrendering your power.” This really connected with me in the work I do as a yoga instructor, tarot reader, and mindfulness coach. Individuals come to me for guidance and instruction. As such, I am acutely aware of my position as the facilitator, teacher, or advisor. There is a power dynamic here that I have to be mindful of to create a container or space where the seeker feels comfortable enough to explore, receive, and share. I never thought of it as surrendering my power, but that’s part of the exchange. We both give a little so that we both walk away with something. Awe once again led me to clarification that I didn’t know I needed. But it didn’t stop there.

I have not focused much on the Belle portion of Belle-Awe, although I did mention my stance on beauty as a paradigm representing balance internally and externally. My relationship to beauty as a way of life was not the only reason I knew this work would include the term Belle. I associate Belle not only with beauty, but love. And for my cynical folks, stay with me here.

Love has felt like a concept that is confusing, enlightening, devouring, and sought after. Dr. Thomas Dixon, for Psychology Today, explores whether love is even considered to be an emotion. He makes note of the absence of love from most lists of emotions or emotion wheels. He notes that perhaps the confusion around whether love is an emotion is because of the various applications of the term. Love can be between people, objects, experiences; honestly, almost anything can bring up an emotion or physical sensation that we associate with the term love. Love exists between friends, lovers, family, and the divine. There are just so many ways to apply this term. Dr. Dixon shares that perhaps what we call the emotion of love is ‘micro-moments’ of connection as posited by psychologist Barbara Fredrickson. Either way, love is a powerful experience.

Love for me has been complicated. Early this year, during meditation, I experienced deep, intense moments of feeling extremely loved and held. It helped me to build my physical container through which I practice emotional integrity and build emotional fortitude. Because of this work, I maturely ended some connections with clear communication. Where I usually feared confrontation and disappointing others, because I was so clear that I was loved and that clear upfront communication was just one way I showed love to others, I did not ignore or avoid what needed to be done.

I knew it was the right thing to do, but I still felt shame and internal judgment. The way my inner aspects would speak to me didn’t feel very loving. There was an internal pressure to be right, make things right, to not be the villain or the victim. The need for control of the narrative, projecting onto the other, and concern of how I was being viewed in the situation reared their ugly heads. And I struggled with allowing myself to sleep at night. I stayed up late reading because I no longer scrolled on social media. In the same way, I replaced overeating and consuming excessive amounts of sweets with shopping; I replaced social media with reading. I knew I needed sleep, but I couldn’t go to bed on time. I justified it as self-care, having a moment to myself at the end of the day, or just being caught up in a good story. But at the end of the day, I was seeking comfort. Something to distract me from the voice in my head telling me that I had got it wrong again.

“I could not believe it had taken me this long to realize that punishment is not love. In fact, it is the opposite of love.

Forgiveness is love. Spaciousness is love”.

Here, right at the end of Foo’s book, after I was drawn back into finishing the text by the word awe, I had an aha moment. It clicked why I always struggled to go to bed on time. When I ended the connections, I anticipated being punished for not doing what I believed they wanted me to do. If there was not a response that supported my internal narrative that I should be punished, I would punish myself.

Love, the erotic, and knowledge are all forms of power. The awareness I gained from this moment felt like a power-up. Like I was solo leveling and growing stronger with each bit of wisdom I gained. I shared my relationship to the word love, to give context to why the following quote was such an awe-inspiring revelation for me.

“…he possessed all the power to give his daughter what she needed. It was the opposite of shame that allowed him to really be there. Over and over, the answer is the same, isn’t it? Love, love, love. The salve and the cure”.

Love. This word I brushed off at the beginning of the year as being too simple and cringey, kept showing up as the answer. Over the past five months, I have been shown repeatedly how loved and cared for I am. But the inner voice would still say, it’s not enough and I could do better. I could make more money, show up more on social media, be more “successful”. That the love wasn’t enough. That inner voice is the part of me that is concerned for my well-being. I know that, but it’s way of going about things leaves me feeling sad, unworthy, shamed, and guilty. As Foo states, “I had to reject the idea that punishing myself would solve the problem. I had to find the love”.

Time to embrace that love is a worthy purpose. That giving and receiving love is a superpower.

Time to find the love.

With love,

Kamilah Rose

Resources:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-history-of-emotions/202308/is-love-an-emotion

Foo, S. 2022. What My Bones Know.