Permission to Be Emotional

Ep #203 - Permission to Be Emotional - An Interview with Author and Spiritual Teacher, Joffre McClung.   In this episode of Empowering Chats with Susan Burrell I welcome Joffre McClung. Besides being an author and a spiritual teacher she is also, what I like to call a common sense activist. Joffre’s latest book is a workbook and guide to finding yourself and journeying back to self-love. As we entered into this conversation, we both realized how often the work of transforming and changing really is a whole lot of hard work. It’s the kind of work many of us don’t want to tackle. We often look for the quick fix, the easy path to enlightenment and it doesn’t exist. Only when you are truly committed to doing the work and looking under the rocks, to see what is hiding there, that change and transformation can occur. Joffre tackles this subject of self-love in her new book, The Heart of the Matter, by asking deep questions to get you, the reader diving into your inner self and un-earthing that which needs to be investigated. It is set-up as a workbook on purpose so that you can use it as a way to get back to yourself and begin the journey of self-love. Joffre’s first book was all about grief and overcoming it. Joffre shares her story with me on how she dealt with the back-to-back deaths of close family members and friends. Her mother, best friend, aunt and her sister all died within an 8-year span. It was one of the darkest periods of Joffre’s life and yet even in that dark place there were gifts that showed up for her. Writing helped her get through her grief and re-discover her creativity and herself. She had to do the hard inner work, including her own deep grieving. Walking this path helped her to recognize the end, the saying goodbye to what was, so that she could welcome the beginning of something new. In Joffre’s experience and mine as well, we realize that when you have darkness around you is when you really need to do the work – the homework of diving deep into self to see where you are meant to grow.  Only by having the contrast that life provides can we as individuals and soul-centered beings learn to grow and move into our higher selves. The light and the dark must be present together in order for us as to know the difference. We don’t always like it and we don’t always want to step into the lesson, but in order to ascend and move beyond the hurt we must walk this path. In this empowering chat we touched on so many aspects of growth with the main focus always bouncing back to self. We cannot control the outside world we can only control ourselves and our inner world. We get to choose how we want to respond to all that is coming towards us. And by doing the hard inner work is when we can make the shift so that our response becomes one of love rather than anger. The biggest work is getting to the place of self-love – not self-like – but true self-love so that you can lean on yourself and know that deep down all is good in your inner-world. When you get there is when you can truly understand that nothing else matters. Love of self, leads to love of others, leads to whole life love and grounding. It is also very important to give yourself permission to feel what you are feeling – get emotional, cry, scream do whatever you need to do in order to feel the deep emotions. Because only then will you begin to understand yourself and love all the bits that make up the unique person that you are.   To learn more about Joffre McClung please visit her website at: JoffreMcclung.com To purchase her book, The Heart of the Matter: JoffreMcclung.com/book To learn more about the work I do please visit my website at: SusanBurrell.com