Here's something most of us were never actually taught: How to feel a big feeling without being swept away by it.
Think about it for a moment. We're taught how to read, how to add up numbers, how to tie our shoe laces. But nobody actually sat us down as children and said, "When something big rises up inside you, here's what you need to do: notice it, let it move through you, and then choose your next step from a calm place, rather than from inside the feeling itself." Most of us learnt the opposite, without anyone meaning to teach it: react first and understand later. Snap, or shut down, or say yes when we mean no. All of them inherited responses we never chose, and rarely think to question.
I certainly wasn't taught this as a child. I suspect you weren't either. Most of us grew up learning to manage our behaviour around big feelings. The same handed-down phrases repeated to us, generation after generation: 'don't be so sensitive,' 'big girls don't cry,' 'calm down.' All without ever learning to actually recognise the feeling itself, let it be there, and respond rather than react. It's strange, when you think about it. We spend our whole lives feeling things, and yet so few of us were ever taught how our feelings actually work.
This is exactly why I chose to create The World of Amelia Rose.
Each story follows Amelia through a big feeling, not to teach children to avoid feelings, or push through them, but to do something far more useful: to notice what's happening inside, name it, and let it pass through rather than take over or take root. It's such a simple skill, and yet it's one that, learnt early, can quietly change the entire way a person moves through life.
Because here's the part I would really love you to understand: life will always bring big feelings. That never stops, for a child or a grown woman. But there's a real difference between a feeling that moves through you and one that takes the wheel entirely. One passes. The other can end up steering situations, decisions, relationships, basically your entire life, without you ever realising it was in charge.
That's really what I mean when I talk about "playing the game of life" well. It's not about avoiding the big feelings, but learning to recognise them the moment they arrive, without needing to react to every single one. It's a skill. And like any skill, it's so much easier to learn as a child than to untangle as an adult.
So if you take one thing from Amelia's stories, please let it be this: your feelings were never the problem. Not knowing what to do with them was. And it's genuinely never too late to learn, for both you, and for the child reading alongside you.
With love, Donna Marie, Creator of The World of Amelia Rose
You might also like:
Amelia Rose and the Voice of Comparison — a gentle story for young girls who compare themselves to others, and the grown-ups who love them.
Receive Your Free Companion Pack — gentle activities and conversation prompts to explore feelings together.