"Spectrum Respect"

I recently chatted with Pamela Sackett, language artist and founder of Emotion Literacy Advocates (you are highly encouraged to read and explore her work).

We discussed emotional literacy, trauma, love, and alignment, among other things. Pamela speaks about emotion as a spectrum, and I needed to add this beautiful word (spectrum) to my journaling lexicon.

Spectrum respect is an approach to journaling that honors the multi-layered nature of emotions and experiences, favoring the description of experiences in their active form over simply labeling them.

For example, I could journal:

"I'm sad today because my cat passed away and I can't stop crying."

Or I could say:

"I'm holding grief for the loss of my cat. I didn't know how much I loved her until now. She will be missed, and I'm happy I knew her at all."

Multiple feelings are honored in the second sentence. There's nothing "wrong" with the first one at all. The second brings more precision to the entry because it accommodates more layers than the initial, more forefronted emotion.