this has been a huge part of my journey in the past 6 mos or so. Starting to feel things for the first time in so long. Realizing that in trying to be numb to keep out the bad stuff, I was keeping out all the good stuff, too.
It reminds me of something the writer Anne Lamott said in an essay she wrote about grief shortly after her best friend died. She said she had to ask herself "how alive do you want to be right now?"
Because being numb to pain is being numb to everything, and how alive IS that?