Permission to Feel Your Feels... Even When It Sucks
What the FX show "Dying for Sex" taught me about emotional avoidance — and what happens when we finally stop to feel.
This is the latest installment in the Permission Slip series — an ongoing exploration of the things we deny ourselves and the freedom that comes from reclaiming them. If you missed earlier pieces, take a moment to read Permission to Pause and Permission to Dress Your Grief in Beauty.
Today's post reflects on the FX series Dying for Sex (streaming on Disney+), which touches on themes of illness and sexual trauma. Please take care of yourself if you decide to watch.
In mid-April, I came home after a long work day with soggy Chipotle leftovers and a Cutwater Lime Margarita. I put on a muumuu (from my extensive, post-turning-40, Mrs. Roper kaftan collection), popped a gummy, and queued up Dying for Sex, a buzzy, one-season FX show, starring Michelle Williams. I figured it was a good way to process some of my grief of the past year — kind of like how I used to watch Call the Midwife for sanctioned crying time after my divorce.
I ended up weeping into guac, whispering “what the actual f*ck?” to my apathetic cat, and blowing through half a box of tissues. Not because I was triggered. Because something in me split open — that carefully maintained dam between the acceptable feelings I let myself name and the deeper layers of grief I've been pretending aren’t there.
Dying for Sex is the story of Molly — a woman whose terminal cancer diagnosis sends her chasing aliveness. Without spoiling the show (you can glean this from the trailer), she leaves her marriage, partners with her best friend Nikki (played perfectly by Jenny Slate), and embarks on a wild, often absurd sexual odyssey.
But the show isn't really about sex. It’s about what happens when you stop seeking permission for your desires. When you finally admit what you want — not what you're supposed to want — before the window closes, or your body makes the choice for you.
It was Molly's honesty that hit me hardest. Her refusal to flinch from desire. Her grief. Her rage. Her tender ache for connection. Watching her move toward sensation — toward truth — felt like someone holding up a mirror to everything I've been avoiding.
There's a line where Molly says, "I've spent my whole life being scared of what I feel."
And something in me just… dropped. Because that’s me, too. Not that I don’t share my feelings — Lorde knows I’ll write them into essays for strangers on the internet — but I’ve spent a lifetime managing which feelings get airtime. The acceptable ones. The processed ones. The ones with neat little bows and lessons attached.
Why We’re So Afraid to Feel Our Feelings
I’ve spent most of my life managing other people’s emotions. Anticipating their needs. Making things easier, lighter, less uncomfortable. (This, I’ve come to learn through my coach training, is a trauma response.)
What I haven’t always known how to do is stay present with my own. Especially lately — when the grief has been louder than usual.
Grief for life as I thought it was supposed to be.
Grief for the world shaking at its foundations.
Grief for thousands of innocent children dying in preventable wars and famines.
Grief for people I miss.
People I’ve had to step away from.
People who’ve chosen to step away from me.
People I still love but can’t hold close.
A few months ago, I made the painful decision to walk away from someone I still loved deeply. Not because the feelings were gone — but because I couldn’t keep abandoning myself in a dynamic that couldn’t meet me fully where I now need to be met.
My body still aches for him sometimes. Especially in quiet moments. Especially when I’m cracked open by other grief I can’t name out loud. (My heart, bless her, has always had a soft spot for the beautifully complicated ones with exit signs glowing in the distance.)
But over time, I’ve come to understand: it wasn’t just him I missed. It was the comfort. The way his presence slowed my breath. The way he made everything more fun. The way I could unmask around him — like letting my carefully guarded racehorse of a brain out of the barn for a speed-sprint.
This time, I made a conscious decision to sit with the longing. Instead of texting him at 1 a.m., I reached for my journal. Wrote down everything I missed until my hand cramped. Then closed the book and cried into my childhood teddy bear, instead of trying to erase the ache.
That’s exactly what Molly does throughout the series — she keeps reaching for herself. Reconnecting with her traumatized childhood self. Even when it’s messy. Even when it hurts. Even when disappearing might be easier.
Not in a glossy “self-love” Instagram way — but in the raw, inconvenient, sometimes excruciating act of staying with her truth.
I found myself watching her story and thinking:
What if I didn’t need a terminal diagnosis to reclaim my own life?
Signs you’re avoiding your emotions (without realizing it)
What I realized, through tears and guacamole that night, was that maybe I’ve been working through burnout for over a decade.
But by sitting in it, I saw a little Nadine in me longing to be comforted and seen after being hurt or messing up. But she didn’t feel like she could ask for help because she was convinced she didn’t deserve to. She’d brought this all on herself. Oh, the shame!
It’s often easier to avoid these realizations than to face what they might ask of us. But emotional avoidance isn’t always dramatic. Sometimes it’s so subtle it could win an Oscar for “Best Background Character Pretending Nothing’s Wrong.”
For me, it’s looked like:
Turning hard feelings into jokes (Ta-da! Sadness in a sequin jumpsuit!)
Intellectualizing my grief until it disappears into a think piece
Numbing out with work, scrolling, or someone else’s crisis
Believing I don’t deserve comfort unless I’ve first rescued a small village and alphabetized my trauma
Emotional avoidance isn’t weakness. It’s adaptive. It’s mascara-streaked emotional triage.
It got me through my daughter’s surgery, stroke, and recovery.
It helped me solo-parent after divorce, when falling apart wasn’t an option.
But the cost of never feeling adds up —
In shoulder tension, that’s less “tightness” and more “a haunted house of repressed emotion.”
In the way I glaze over mid-convo when someone accidentally opens a door I boarded shut.
In how quickly I grab my phone the second silence starts to itch — like it might say something true.
We tell ourselves we’re fine. We post memes. We over-function.
Until a fictional character’s sexual bucket list drop-kicks your repression and suddenly you’re sobbing into stale tortilla chips, wondering why your guacamole tastes like heartbreak.
Because what if acknowledging the abandonment fear, or the rage, or the heartbreak means acknowledging something unforgivable about ourselves?
What “Dying for Sex” Taught Me About Emotional Honesty
What stayed with me most about Dying for Sex wasn’t the sex. It was the staying.
The way Molly didn’t flinch from her own longing. The way her best friend Nikki didn’t try to fix her — just stayed beside her, giant bag of snacks and all.
Perhaps what resonated most wasn’t Molly’s pursuit of pleasure, but her willingness to meet mortality head-on. While she had no choice in her diagnosis, she chose how to meet it.
Most of us spend our lives dancing around death — not just physical death, but the smaller deaths of identity, relationships, youth, and possibility.
We avoid our feelings partly because they remind us we’re impermanent. Vulnerable. Not in control.
But what if feeling fully — joy, grief, rage, desire — is how we practice dying well?
Not by disappearing. But by showing up, completely, until the very end.
Maybe it's not about getting over our feelings, but metabolizing them — letting them move through us, change us, and become part of our story rather than something we need to escape from or solve.
That’s the kind of presence I want to offer myself now.
Not the overachieving, self-help-book version.
Not the one who wraps grief in glitter and calls it personal growth.
Just a soft, steady witness. Especially when staying feels like a full-contact sport.
This week’s Permission Slip: Feel Your F-cking Feels
Here’s what I’m (re)learning:
Our emotions don’t check our calendar before showing up.
They arrive like raccoons in your compost — no warning, no apology.
The only choice is whether we turn on the porch light and face them.
The goal isn't to process emotions away until you never feel them again. It's to metabolize them—to let them become integrated parts of your story rather than landmines you tiptoe around.
You don’t have to earn your grief. You don’t need to spin it into a lesson or a poem or a TED Talk. (Though, let’s face it, I’m still gonna sometimes.)
You get to feel. Fully. Without shame.
Even if your therapist’s out of office. (Hi, Sabrina!)
Even if no one else gets it.
Even if you’re still figuring out what “it” is.
What society often frames as "falling apart" or "being too emotional" is actually the courageous work of reclaiming parts of yourself that have been silenced. It's not collapse — it's revolution. It's finding your way back to wholeness, one uncomfortable feeling at a time.
(Also, that’s probably why your shoulders are killing you.)
Reflection questions:
Noodle these, and if you’re comfortable, I’d love to hear from you:
What helps you stay with your feelings, instead of making them a spreadsheet?
What have you been avoiding — and what might shift if you gave it a microphone and ten minutes of your time?
Drop a comment. Send me a note. Or just let it echo inside your ribcage for a while.
You are not alone in this weird, tender, absurd human thing.
And hey — if you try the 90-Second Reset, I’d genuinely love to know if it made you cry, curse, or both. Remember, it’s a practice. ;)
BONUS: A 90-second emotional processing practice for staying with your feelings
If any of what I’ve just shared feels familiar, here’s a practice. No chanting. No inner goddess bullsh-t. Just 90 seconds of not bailing on yourself.
The 90-Second Reset by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor
Based on research by neuroanatomist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, the chemical surge of an emotion moves through your body in about 90 seconds. What happens after that is your brain choosing to hold onto the story. This practice helps you ride the wave — without getting pulled under.
Set a timer.
Play music that matches your mood (no, not your "Productivity Beats" playlist).
Close your eyes.
Ask: Where do I feel this in my body?
Put a hand there. Stay with it.
No defensiveness. No fixing. Just breathe and listen.
Whisper: "I can feel this. I don't have to solve it."
That's it. You've stayed. Look at you. A whole damn revolution in yoga pants.
Want to go a step further?
Which version of you is there? What does she want you to know?
Whisper: "Thank you for protecting us. We're safe now. I've got us."
Gently imagine integrating her back into your heart.
(Here’s a playlist you might try that I’m tinkering with on Apple Music for now. Sorry, Spotify fans.)
PPS: Babygirl — the Nicole Kidman film that sparked possibly my most popular post ever, AND the concept of Permission Slip — is now streaming on Amazon Prime.
Love this! Avoidance will always bite us and in midlife we are just too damned tired to outrun it.
“instead of trying to erase the ache.” This is what I’ll be sitting with. I love how you’ve stated metabolizing feelings/reactions rather than getting over or past them. It’s got me noodling about myself and my role as a group facilitator.