CONCEAL & CARRY

We walk through life loaded.

Not with guns.

With emotions we never learned how to feel.

Most of us were never taught how to talk about what we carry.

We were taught how to conceal it.

Swallow it.

Dress it up.

Smile through it.

Silence it.

And call that strength.

But concealed emotions do not disappear.

They sit in the body like ammunition.

All it takes is the right trigger, at the wrong time, with the right person, and suddenly everything we hid becomes a weapon.

Emotions and Feelings

Emotions and feelings are not the same thing.

Emotions are labels.

Feelings are meanings.

Emotions are what we call it.

Feelings are what we decide it means.

Emotions are displayed outside the body.

Feelings are displayed inside the body.

We feel and then give it a name, an emotion.

This is where most people get stuck.

We spend our lives trying to control emotions, when what we really want is a feeling.

One thing I hear almost everyday is,

"I just want to be happy."

We chase happiness because we love the feeling it brings.

But happiness was never meant to be permanent, and it is not the goal.

And the easiest way to prove that is death.

When someone you love dies, you dont want to be happy.

You want peace.

Peace in knowing you have no regrets.

No unsaid truth.

No lingering "I should have said this" or "I wish I would have done that."

So what we are really searching for is not happiness.

It is peace.

Peace allows every emotion to enter without consuming you.

Peace allows sadness, anger, frustration, fear, and grief without losing yourself in any of them.

When you have peace, you do not need happiness everyday.

You need honesty everyday.

Why We Conceal Instead of Feel

Feeling requires truth.

Feeling requires curiosity.

Feeling requires responsibility.

Feeling requires slowing down.

And for those of us who grew up surviving, slowing down feels unsafe.

Survival teaches you to keep moving.

To keep functioning.

To keep pushing.

To not feel too deeply or too loudly.

So we conceal.

Not to hide from others, but to hide from ourselves.

Because feeling will make you confront what shaped you and what you allowed.

Where We Conceal and Carry

We conceal and carry in places we do not think to check.

We conceal and carry in clothes.

Not metaphorically. Literally.

I had a client who said she felt heavy walking into a thrift store. I told her because there is memory sitting on fabric.

Clothes have carried rape, abuse, celebration, heartbreak, graduation, diagnosis, joy, humiliation, goodbyes, and becomings.

We conceal and carry in our hair.

People cut their hair during transitions not for style, but for release.

Hair holds identity, seasons, and rebirth.

When hair goes, history goes.

We conceal and carry in the food we eat.

Animals carry emotions too.

Fear. Panic. Adrenaline. Cortisol.

That is why packaging now says grass fed, free range, and humanely raised.

Because emotions are stored in bodies, even non human ones.

We conceal and carry in accolades.

Degrees, promotions, titles, certifications.

We try to achieve our way out of childhood pain.

We think success will heal what silence never acknowledged.

But achievement does not comfort the wounded child inside of you.

We conceal and carry in generational patterns and curses.

We inherit what nobody healed.

We conceal and carry in pregnancy.

Babies do not just inherit genetics.

They inherit imprinting.

They inherit what the mother felt, feared, or survived.

The womb is emotional, spiritual, and informational.

And the most dangerous concealment of all is silence.

Silence does not protect.

Silence preserves.

Silence stores.

Silence keeps everything in circulation.

When Triggers Pull the Trigger

This is why people explode over small things.

Triggers do not create emotion.

Triggers expose what was already loaded.

A stranger did not offend you.

They pulled the part of you that has been unheard for years.

Your partner did not make you cry.

They touched the grief you never named.

Your child did not stress you out.

They activated the fear you buried at twelve.

Triggers do not create the weapon.

They fire it.

Before We Close

Feeling is how you learn yourself.

Feeling is how you discover what you need.

Feeling is how you understand what you have been holding.

Feeling is how you finally stop storing.

Ci Notes

We do not need to stop feeling.

We need to stop concealing.

Ask yourself:

What have I been concealing and carrying and ready to release, not fire but release by feeling?

Let that sit with you.

Peace does not come from hiding.

It comes from unloading.