Motherhood – Emotions Series

Officially, there are only five recognised universal emotions. They are Anger, Disgust, Enjoyment, Fear and Sadness.

I find that funny given the vast variety of different emotions I go through a day. It feels like there a thousand different emotions but, in the end, it all boils down to only five. Now, as a mother of two children, one of them not even one-month-old, this feels especially true. 

Initially, I thought it was disappointing that only one of them was positive and the remaining ones were negative. If most of the things we are enabled to feel are bad, how can we be truly happy?

And then I realised, that words like “positive”, “negative”, “bad” are value judgments. I am evaluating these emotions, maybe not accurately. Being a coach, this becomes an a-ha moment, an opportunity to change things around.

Take Anger, for example. As a friend and psychoanalyst used to tell me, “Anger is energy, use it”. Being often tired, this is an intriguing idea. To be able to use this raw power and direct it into something constructive. What if I can use this emotion when I’m feeling blocked to enable, to unlock a path to do something I want or need to get done?

This wondering is the basis for this series of posts. Sharing the reality of motherhood, with all its emotions and my efforts to honour those emotions and use them for the benefit and happiness of our family.  One by one, we’ll be digging into Anger, Disgust, Enjoyment, Fear and Sadness and how they colour all of our days and our growth as a family. 

May they trigger some emotions in you too and bring you more power to your life.