"Feel It"

I have to admit, I didn't actually buy Sister Hazel's first album, the self-titled debut of 1996, until sometime after college.  I liked Sister Hazel in middle school, along with virtually every other kid in my class, and bought their hit album "Somewhere More Familiar" with the naive assumption that the famous album was their first.  I didn't even discover their true beginning until many years later, when seeing them live in Myrtle Beach sparked my interest in their more recent music.

I bought the debut album largely with the intention of fulfilling my complete collection, and originally it was actually my least favorite of their many CDs.  It is less polished, and is slightly more country and less rock than everything that has followed.  Yet gradually it has grown on me.  I have found that while their sound has matured, their heart has always been the same.

The first song on the first album is "Feel It".  Looking over the lyrics early this morning, I was delighted at how very fitting they were for a counseling student on her blog:

But now I can't hold it - hold it
Flash a frozen smile when it boils down inside.
No now I can't hold it - hold it
Just a little crack...
And then the walls come tumblin' down
And I Feel It,

It's my time don't try to steal it.
Feel it. Reach inside
Feel it.

If you ask well I won't conceal it.

In my program much of our focus is, of course, on feeling.  I read recently how important it is to "feel your feelings"- not repress or over-express.  I have found that in school many people assume that feeling means over-expression, which I tend to react to antagonistically.  I am irritated when someone cries in every class, anticipating praise for their "openness". Yet in the same vein, others have interpreted me as 'repressed' because I tend to speak out so rarely.

Sister Hazel's lyrics seem to speak to the beautifully healthy version of expression; not pasting a smile over a breaking heart, and allowing oneself to simply feel what is true in the moment.  In my recent hospice training I heard that every loss we do not fully grieve compounds onto the next loss.  Imagine a child whose beloved dog dies when she is three years old and she is told "big girls don't cry".  Then her parents' divorce, and she is too afraid to hurt them to show her sadness and rage.  By the time she is twenty-five and a good friend dies, her grief will be ten-fold, because she will be simultaneously grieving all of those losses she could not grieve originally.  How much more painful that death will be when complicated by all of her past hurt. The key to healing is to feel the suffering in the first place.

As for myself in this moment, I feel charmed and grateful that in their very first song Sister Hazel was already offering up lovely pieces of wisdom.  Who needs a Master's to become a therapist when Sister Hazel can fill in quite nicely?