The First Time I Realized Feeling Deeply Was a Strength

I once worked the drive-thru at Burger King. It wasn’t glamorous, but I was seventeen.
The grease in the air clung to my skin and customers would yell at me because chicken fries were discontinued or slushy machine was broke.

But there was a woman who worked every Sunday afternoon with me. She was in her fifties, had fuzzy cat stickers on her name tag, brought her own music to play in the back, and always had a paperback sticking out of her purse. Most days she ran in late, braiding her hair as she clocked in.

Sad love songs poured from the break room or should I say closet, during every shift. Often times she'd tear up mid-chorus. No hiding it. No apology. “I’m a deep feeler,” she’d say with a shrug.

On slower days she scribbled little positive quotes on napkins. Tucking them into to-go bags like secret poems for strangers. She said she just wanted people to feel a little more special, like someone out there was rooting for them.

There that word was again, feel.

From her I learned how to truly let myself feel, how to stand up for myself, and how to find poetry in the most unexpected places. Feelings were never rushed or shamed in her presence. She simply made space for them. Even in a fast-food restaurant with fluorescent lighting and ketchup on the floor.

That was one of the first times I saw that feeling deeply wasn’t something to be embarrassed about. It could even be a gift.

These moments became a thread woven into my book Deep In My Feels and I didn’t even know it yet.

This book is for people like her. The ones who can let tears fall on their lunch break not ashamed to let there feelings be known, showing up for others in beautiful ways even when you don’t feel okay, or being a deep thinker most days.

I didn’t know it then, but in a Burger King uniform on Sunday afternoons for a few months of my life, she changed the trajectory of what vulnerability for me would look like.