Dear Boris:

“I’m quite literally a stranger to my own heart, emotions, and body… My heart (and emotions) have never been welcome at the table”- your heart is welcome in your thread.

“I’m not even sure how to go about ‘welcoming’ these emotions to the table”- John Bradshaw is very famous for his books and exercises on healing the inner child, which means: welcoming the estranged, exiled heart back into your lives. One of his books is called Homecoming: it’s about the heart coming back home. One of his exercises I think,  is to write with your non-dominant hand; it may give you greater access to your feelings, slowing down the thinking because you can’t write fast with your non-dominant hand.

The very practice of thinking too fast, “hosing words” as you called it,  as entertaining as it can be- is keeping our hearts in exile.

anita