The Inner Practice
Honest reflections on what it means to feel off, get clear, and find our way forward..
Written by Anna Scott.
What Emotions Are.
I have been fascinated with emotions for most of my life.
Not because I understood them—but because I wasn’t allowed to feel them.
When my father died, we were told we could not be sad. We were told to move on, to be strong, to shut it down. And what I came to understand, much later, is that you cannot shut down one emotion without shutting down all of them.
So I did.
And then I became interested.
“The Party, the Tattoos, and the Thank You I Wanted.”
My daughter turned 23 this weekend, and I gathered friends, family, delicious food, and beauty to celebrate her.
I bought the ingredients for Aperol spritzes, ordered arancini for an appetizer, decorated the house with helium balloons, sunflowers, and anemones, and made Stan’s famous coleslaw along with her favorite mac and cheese. I worked hard, and I was thrilled to give her an evening that was all hers.
The next day, around 4 p.m., she texted me a photo of her new tattoos: a salt and a pepper shaker, inked in honor of her late father, who had a salt-and-pepper mustache.
She asked if I liked them.