Over these past two months, you've been doing something that most people spend their whole lives avoiding: turning toward your feelings instead of away from them. You've questioned the belief that some feelings are good and some are bad. You've noticed what happens when feelings are caged. You've let stuck feelings start to move. You've listened for the intelligence your feelings carry. You've explored the power hiding inside the emotions you were taught to suppress. You've experimented with letting your body express what words couldn't. And here's what I want you to sit with as we close out this chapter: When a feeling is unshamed, when it's finally allowed to be felt, expressed, and witnessed without judgment, it doesn't stay the same. It flowers. It becomes the next thing. And what seemed like something wrong with you often blossoms into an understanding that something was very right with you all along. The sensitivity wasn't weakness. It was perception. The anger wasn't a problem. It was a boundary. The grief wasn't something to get over. It was love with nowhere to go. The intensity wasn't too much. It was aliveness. 🌸 This week's reflection: Think back across these two months. Is there a feeling you used to see as a problem that you're starting to see differently now? What did you think was wrong with you that you're beginning to understand might actually be right? What is your feeling flowering into, now that it has a little room to breathe? Nothing was ever wrong with you. Your feelings were never the problem. They were the doorway. And you've been brave enough to walk through it. 💛 xo, Amanda

We've been taught that the way to deal with a feeling is to talk about it. Name it. Understand it. Journal about it. Think it through. And while words have their place, here's what I've learned: you can't think your way to the intelligence of a feeling. Feelings don't live in language. They live in the body. And they often need something other than words to move. Sound. Movement. Gesture. Even facial expression. When someone makes the sound of their sadness, or lets their body move the way their anger wants to move, or lets their face show what they've been hiding behind a polite expression, something lands instantly. There's often a cry or a laugh that follows, because something in them recognized its own truth for the first time. This isn't dramatic or performative. It's the body finally being allowed to express what words alone have never been able to reach. 💫 This week's reflection: Think of a feeling that's been sitting in you lately, something words haven't been able to touch. Now try this: if that feeling had a sound, what would it be? Not a word. A sound. A groan, a sigh, a hum, a roar, a whisper. If you're somewhere private, try making it out loud. What happens in your body when you let the feeling express itself through something other than language? Even five minutes of letting a feeling move through your body can shift something that's been stuck for years. Your feelings don't just want to be understood. They want to be expressed. xo, Amanda

Here's something that might change how you see your emotional life: the feelings you've been working so hard to manage? They contain your power. Not just your emotions. Your power. The kind you need to set a boundary. To leave a situation that isn't safe. To say what you mean without apologizing for it. To take on something that matters to you. To resist the voices, internal and external, that tell you to stay small. But as long as you're managing those feelings, containing them, keeping them at a reasonable level, making sure they don't inconvenience anyone, you are also containing your power. Depression can be a sign of suppressed personal fire. Tearfulness can be a sign of something that needs to be expressed, not wiped away. Even the feelings we've been most ashamed of often carry a birthright that's been buried. And most of us don't even know it's there. Because shame convinced us the feelings were the problem. So we never got to find out what was underneath them. This week's reflection: Think about the feeling you spend the most energy managing. The one you work hardest to keep under control. Now ask yourself: what would happen if you stopped managing it? Not acted it out recklessly, but truly let yourself feel the full weight of it. What kind of power might be living underneath all that containment? What have you not been able to do in your life because that power has been locked away? You weren't meant to manage your feelings into something acceptable. You were meant to feel them into something powerful. xo, Amanda

Now that the summer is coming to a close, my daughter is back to school (this week!), and I have a bit more time to think (phew!), I want to share about what's been on my mind and heart for several months. I want to connect more deeply. Have conversations in person (online but together in the same virtual room) so we can dive deeper into the unshaming conversation and implement what we're learning here. I want to build community. This looks like gathering regularly, sharing whatever is coming up in our experiences, and having a group of women to lean on and become unshaming witnesses for each other. I want you to have an experience of what unshaming looks like in real time. Not just journal prompts and courses to study and learn from. The in-person experience is a necessary part of this unshaming journey and will blow your mind! That leads me to what I want to create here in our UnShaming for Women community, and I want your feedback! Here's what I'm thinking: - a monthly gathering to connect, share, learn, listen, and become unshaming witnesses for each other - experience unshaming in real time with opportunities to work with me directly and ask questions in a group setting So what do you think? I'd love to hear your feedback. Is this something that you would like to experience? If so, I'll set something up for mid to late September. :)

Of all the feelings shame has buried, anger might be the one it guards the most. As women, most of us learned very early that anger was dangerous. Ugly. Unfeminine. Too much. We learned to swallow it, soften it, turn it inward, or dress it up as something more palatable. "I'm not angry, I'm just frustrated." "I'm not angry, I'm hurt." Anything to avoid being seen as the angry woman. But anger isn't the enemy. What we've been taught about anger is. Because underneath the anger that's been policed, shamed, and locked away, there is almost always something powerful. Clarity about what matters to you. A boundary that's been crossed. A truth that's been denied. A fierce protectiveness over something you love, including yourself. Anger doesn't need to be managed. It needs to be witnessed. And when it is, it often flowers into something unexpected: power. ❤️‍🔥 This week's reflection: When was the last time you felt angry and immediately tried to shut it down, soften it, or explain it away? What were you actually angry about? And if you let yourself feel the full force of that anger without editing it, what is it protecting? What truth is it carrying that you haven't been allowed to say out loud? Your anger is not a character flaw. It’s a powerful intelligence that’s been silenced. xo, Amanda