Feel your feelings with these two poems

Sometimes in a therapy session, a poem comes to mind. Depending on the client and the session, I’ll mention the poem and ask the client if I can send it to them. Other times, I go with my gut and follow up from our session with a poem tucked inside an email. A well-timed poem can feel like a gift (at least to me). Poems can be such succinct, magical forms of communication.

The following two poems are favorites for me to send when there’s an invitation to feeling all the feelings, not just the “good” or comfortable ones, but the ones that some of us (me included) can put off feeling. I’ve listed my favorite lines below, but I encourage you to read the poems in their entirety:

The Guest House by Jalaluddin Rumi (Translated by Coleman Barks)

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Go to the Limits of Your Longing by Rainer Maria Rilke (Translated by Joanna Macy)

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.