Anyone who knows me knows that I feel a lot of feelings. I really feel them, and am not afraid to express them. I suppose this makes me an extrovert, but I still question that on the days that I hide away from the world. The thing is, happy feelings are easy for me to share - the range of emotions that fill my everyday life are expressed through my three C's: Creativity, Craziness, and Caring.

A combo of all three are usually enough to frighten anyone away, but the people who stick around through all that are the real keepers.

This week has been a bit different. I don't know how to describe it other than, its been a week from hell. Coming into it, I knew it would rough - it was a 9 show week, shortly before Christmas. Reserves, both energy and financial were wearing thin. However, if you challenge the fates, they might just rise to the occasion. I lost an incredibly close friend of mine in a tragic manner on the first day of my work week, and I've been struggling with that ever since. After that followed two days of not being able to sleep or eat, aggravating my wrist injury, and spraining my ankle. This isn't a pity-me post, but it gives some context to my recent mental state.

Sharing my feelings this week was hard. I was feeling them, no doubt about it, but these are not feelings that I'm accustomed to - that anyone should be accustomed to. Loss, doubt, grief -- not things that I typically feel so strongly.

So there I was, feeling my feelings, but how do you function when you try to keep your feelings inside? The answer is not very well. A fourth feeling came into play - shame. Shame for being weak, shame for feeling these things, shame about anyone seeing me feel these things. Shame about wanting to hide my feelings, shame about my feelings not being the "right ones" to honor my friend.

Sharing those feelings was one of the hardest things I've had to go through. Thank God that my family, friends and co-workers are incredibly kind and patient people.  Its hard to go through day-to-day life when you aren't mentally present in your body. It's sort of like watching yourself go through the motions.

You get back up on your horse. Eventually you land back in your body. You've cried, you've laughed, you've spoken yourself hoarse. It takes time, and courage.

They say that "sharing is caring" and sometimes it means that it is caring for yourself. Being vulnerable is not easy to do, but if there are people you can share your feelings with, express what you are going through, even if they're just sitting in silence with you while you stare at your hands, you are caring for your mental state in the best way possible - landing your spirit back in your body and carrying on. No matter the loss - that person cared about you, and wants you to keep moving forward and live a good life.