Last night the kids, mom, and I went to see the movie Inside Out. It was an excellent movie – but while I knew it was a movie about emotions I didn’t realize it would unleash a tornado of our own emotions. 

Jacob and I drove home after the movie and he had an emotion explosion. It included a few things, but high up there was his sadness at losing his grandpa. I pulled the car over and gave him a big hug and held him while I listened to him vent out his feelings. I had already vented out my feelings in the darkness of the theatre. Good thing I’m getting used to this public crying thing. Sigh. 

The really great thing about this movie is that it opened the door for us to talk more about feelings. 

Jacob and I had to go into town to do some errands today and on the way in he said well, anger and sadness really got away from me yesterday. It was like anger was pushing things full throttle while sadness was touching all my memories and making them sad. I think fear was hiding over in the corner crapping his pants. 

I really appreciated how the movie showed that sadness could touch happy memories and make them sad. We sure feel that way about the memories of my Dad. I’ll remember something fun we did and for a moment I’m happy and then I remember Dad is gone and my memory becomes sad. Jacob said he felt the same way. It was good to know also that sadness was an important emotion in working things through. 

My favorite part was when the teenage boy saw the girl and all his emotions freaked out shouting girl girl girl 

We went to the mall before going to the Farmer’s Market and he saw his emotions there:

Look mom, here’s my anger and sadness.    
My happiness moment was at the Market. There was a guy there with remote control cars and Jacob and I raced each other and giggled and played together. The guy gave us extra time so we had almost a half hour to laugh and enjoy doing something together. A rich happiness moment.