Hello, hello, this is Sabrina Amina with the feelings pod.
Today's episode is on playful loneliness and approaching loneliness with a playful spirit
or leaning into play as a way to hold feelings of loneliness.
I think maybe my whole life, but not consciously, definitely in recent years.
I've more consciously been thinking about, not thinking about, well, thinking about,
talking about experimenting with the experience of loneliness.
And at this point in my life, it feels like I kind of feel like loneliness is this illusion.
It's a forgetting, it's a separation, it's like I know I'm never alone.
Like even in this moment, I'm alone in my home, but I'm not really alone when I'm
attuned to all of the things in my life that hold me and nurture me and I mean, I first
and foremost is God.
I think my loneliness is a symptom of my forgetfulness of God because God is always with me.
If this is the first time you're listening to me surprise, I believe in God.
If that makes you uncomfortable, maybe lean in or maybe this is not the right space for
you but I'm going to talk about God a lot because I love God.
So I'm also shedding shame around talking about God because I grew up in America.
I'm Muslim American and I've always felt this need to damp down any devotional practices
I have to God because in America, being a religious Muslim automatically translates
to being a terrorist, unfortunately.
Maybe you can be Muslim but you can't be fully expressed in your muslim-ness.
Oh God, I'm having flashbacks to when I was in 10th grade and 9-11 happened.
Oh God, this is not where we were going today.
Anyhow, so that was a brief detour.
But yeah, anyhow, welcome to the feelings pod.
If you're new here, it gets messy and if you've returned, God bless you.
Anyhow, see this is how I play when I'm alone to handle my loneliness.
Like I just talk into my voice recorder and look at all the laughter that's emerged from
my playfulness.
And that's really what I'm here to talk about today is as I this morning I was like, I think
I'm going to talk about my loneliness.
Loneliness feels like such a tender, vulnerable place to talk about but I was like, wait a
minute, have I talked about this before?
And then I think episode, the third episode of this podcast was on loneliness and I, yeah,
that was also like really, I mean all of these episodes are tender because they're very like
come from my heart and they come from my lived experience and so I, yeah, this podcast is
a work of heart so welcome to this portal.
Get cozy, stay a while or if you need to leave, you can exit, stage left.
Choose your own adventure kids.
Okay, now play.
So we all have something called an inner child.
Maybe you've met them, maybe you haven't but if you haven't met your inner child yet, get
curious about what your inner child might need from you.
You know, introduce yourself to your inner child like, I'll be like, hey Amina, how you
doing?
I love you.
I see that you're scared.
I see that you're feeling lonely and rejected and maybe you feel like you don't have any
friends.
I have a lot of like, have a lot of like stuff that came up from like elementary school bullying
so there's an old story that like, you know, I don't have any friends.
I mean I do have friends but like little Amina, little Sabrina Amina just feels like nobody
loves me.
I'm like, hmm, first generation child of immigrants too so that's the whole, if you know you know,
I'm not going to get into that.
Wow, there is a lot going on here in this first six minutes.
You know, I wasn't, I wasn't prepared for this.
Maybe you weren't either.
I'm glad you're here.
Yeah, let's just like take a deep breath and settle in because this is actually a really
fun topic that I'm excited to talk about so maybe that's why I'm like feeling super activated
and all the neurons are firing.
So when I talk to little Sabrina Amina, sometimes she's like, I feel alone.
Why am I alone?
Nobody loves me.
And it's just a forgetting and I'm just like, I see you little Amina, let's play a game.
So I'll get out my paints and I'll make some art.
I'll do something creative.
I'll like, you know, if it's a nice day and it's rained recently, I'll put my feet like
in a muddy spot in the earth.
And it's just like, have you ever squished your feet in mud?
Like, if not, like highly recommend it.
Do nurturing your inner child is a really, it's a really fun and playful way to approach
loneliness.
I'm not really, I, growing up, I was never really practiced at being alone because I
grew up with five siblings and, you know, we have, you know, there's just around people
around all the time.
Whether you want it to be around people or not.
And which is, which is a huge blessing in my life.
And, but also as I grew older and, you know, got more entrenched in systems of capitalism,
I felt more isolated.
Like I entered a professional life and, you know, I was out of this like little cute bubble
that we, some of us have the privilege of experiencing in university or even in high
school or.
And then you're kind of like, not formally in school anymore and just like navigating
this kind of nebulous void of like, what do I do?
Where do I go?
Who am I?
What am I?
What am I doing in the world?
What is my purpose?
And I, yeah.
Sorry, I just need to pause because there are a lot of different avenues I can go down.
And I think the one I'm choosing is my experience of leaving the country when I was in my 20s.
It was a couple of years, I think it was a couple of years after I graduated college
and I was like working as a substitute teacher.
I was living in my parents' home again and feeling very like stifled and like, what am
I supposed to be doing?
So I had a really, really hard breakup but necessary, you know, and I decided to leave
my parents' home and I just like spent, it actually didn't take very long, it was just
like a couple of months, I'm like thinking about it now.
I'm amazed at how quickly I just found a job overseas and was like, I'm out of here, bye.
So I just like packed my bags and left the country.
I bought a one-way ticket to Istanbul, Turkey where I got a job as a kindergarten teacher.
It was a full-time job but it was just kind of like a helper teacher so I had been subbing.
I had not yet gotten my teacher certification.
I went to a weird school called Sarah Lawrence where you don't have majors and you graduate
with something called a useless piece of paper called a liberal arts degree.
Okay, sorry, it's not useless.
I don't know, somebody said you had to get a bachelor's degree so that's what I did.
And then I was like, okay, now I have to pay off some student loans and like figure out
how to like not live in my parents' house.
So my first like full-time job after I graduated college was in Istanbul, Turkey.
I was teaching kindergarten.
I was just like, I got to go.
I got to get out of here.
I got to get out of the country.
I had always longed to like travel and go somewhere.
I'm actually really like amused as I'm telling the story because and I'm really actually
proud of like that version of myself that knew I had to go somewhere and do something.
I mean, it really could have just been a really intense flight response to some overwhelming
stress I was feeling, but it was more than that.
It was a desire to find myself.
So I moved to Istanbul, Turkey and they provided me with an apartment and transportation to
him from my job.
And I was like in this little town in Turkey and I didn't know anybody.
I didn't speak any Turkish, but thankfully the school I worked at, like there were lots
of people who spoke English.
You know, I met other foreigners who were living in Turkey and teaching and that was
the beginning of like a four-year adventure that was just like such a, I mean, it was
a wonderful, beautiful time of my life and it was also very confronting and lonely at
times and the loneliness, the only way I knew how to deal with the loneliness was to like
find other people no matter what, like leave my home and like I could not tolerate like
being alone in my apartment.
It was just, it was too much for me.
And so the problem with that is like, I think I was just, I mean, I definitely found some
wonderful friends, but also it's a good practice to learn how to be alone with yourself and
over the last few years, I've gotten better at it for sure.
I journal, I make space for my feelings.
I started this podcast after a particularly upsetting experience that kind of brought
me face to face with the ways that I self-abandoned and when we're in those kind of patterns of
self-abandonment, of course you feel lonely because you're trying to get your needs met
and expecting folks who have no clue about what you need to give you what you need and
then you keep getting disappointed and because at the end of the day, it was my responsibility
to figure out what I need and how to nurture myself and like create space for me to just
sit with myself and sit with little Amina and reassure her and comfort her and tell
her that she's wonderful and her feelings are valid and we can make art and we can write
and we can journal and we can play outside and we can be held in the warmth of the sunshine
and we can be held by Mother Earth and like just lie in the grass and like, yeah, have
all these transcendent experiences of life on this planet life as a human.
Yeah, so these days I dance and I go for walks and I spend time in nature and I paint.
Painting is really special to me because I was inspired to paint by someone I love very
dearly who's no longer in my life and in a way painting feels like a sweet way to stay
connected and also just like something that uncovers layers of myself that I'm continuously
meeting.
Yeah, every time a new painting emerges from sitting with my child, inner child, I'm just
like I'm in awe of like, oh, look at this beautiful thing you created.
You're so full of magic.
And so loneliness is I think part of like navigating loneliness I think is just part
of my job on this earth and it's just I think it's just a place where I get to learn more
about myself which is really sweet and I notice that I think another way that I avoid my loneliness
is with distraction or overwork or constantly surrounding myself with people like for example
today a friend invited me somewhere and I was like, oh, I could do that or I could just
like kind of sit at home because that was what I was leaning towards but my impulse
is usually to go where the invitation is but today I just listened to the invitation of
like little Amina who was like, I think I need some quiet time.
I think I need some quiet alone time today.
So yeah, I'm here playing with little Amina and I get to be alone but not necessarily
feel consumed by this the the dread that can sometimes come with loneliness.
Yeah, so maybe we can just do a short little breathing exercise today and yeah, find it
comfortable.
You know, why don't you just lie down?
That could be nice if you prefer sitting up you can sit up but definitely like feather
your nest as one of my favorite meditation teachers would say is just like get comfy,
get cozy, like really allow yourself to feel held and if you're not in a place right now
where you can do that just hit pause and come back to the meditation when you're able to
really get cute and cozy and comfortable.
So just allow your your back body to melt into the support below you and start tuning
into your breath and let the eyes soften and close and begin to tune into your breath as
your focus comes inward.
Use the breath as it comes in and out of your body.
There's no need to control the breath just the act of bringing your attention to the
breath brings about subtle changes in the breath.
Tune in might feel nice to put your hand on your belly or your heart just feel the waves
of your body as you breathe in and out and just imagine that the breath is its own being
and you are being breathed by the being of breath.
As you follow the inhale and exhale imagine you're in a really lush garden and it's warm
and maybe there's just like a kiss of humidity that's not oppressive but just like delicious
and you are walking in this greenery and you approach your inner child and you greet them
perhaps you give them a hug or just gaze at them lovingly and you both sit in the softness
of the earth gazing at one another and at this moment you just take the opportunity
to ask your inner child what would you like?
What can I offer you?
And just deeply listen.
You don't have to find the answer.
Let the response emerge.
And maybe your inner child, the little version of you will have something to say right away
and perhaps the little version of you might simply be satisfied with having your attention
in this moment, maybe the little version of you just simply needs to be seen.
Take a deep breath in, let it go and just keep listening.
Allow yourself to sit in stillness with your inner child.
Let it be playful.
Let it be useful.
There's no need to force anything here.
Once you feel like you have an answer, offer your inner child some reassurance and tell
them that I'm here.
I'm here for you.
Tell them that you love them.
Say I love you.
Say I hear you.
I see you.
Tell your inner child I will protect you.
I will care for you.
I will remember you and I will always keep coming back to you.
Take a deep breath in and let it go.
And when you feel complete, give your inner child a hug and a kiss or whatever feels
resonant for you, however you'd like to interact with your inner child.
As your meeting comes to a close once more, just offer reassurance to your inner little
one that you'll be back.
And as you both part ways, feel into this sense of a deeper knowing, a deeper understanding,
a deeper care, a deeper love.
Take a deep breath in, let it go.
Allow yourself to feel nourished by the green garden and when you're ready, you can come
back to the room, let the eyes flutter open and tune into how you feel in this moment.
Thank you so much for sharing this space with me.
Thank you so much for practicing with me and I will see you next time.