I’ve been thinking about my time at UCLA a lot over the past few days.

I was a happy little clam. I was chubby, had a massive uni-brow, and my hair frizzed in all sorts of directions. But I was happy.

Every time I tell someone about how great those college years were, they roll their eyes at me and say, “Of course college was the best time of your life. You had no responsibilities, your best friends lived next door to you, and your metabolism was rocking.” 

(Which, by the way, even though I was a chubby college kid, it’s absolutely true. For the amount of curly cheese fries I ate back then, I’m surprised I didn’t end up weighing 500 pounds).

But, still, I had my fair share of struggles in college. I hated that I was “disobeying” my parents and not pursuing medicine or business. I was by NO MEANS a good student. In fact, I made several trips to the counselors there because I felt like a lost soul. My weight was an issue back then – perhaps even more so because our dining halls were amazing and I could eat french fries daily.

But, despite all that, I was so genuinely happy.

After this past weekend, (and, obviously, after listening to another episode of Yoga Girl), I think I can pinpoint the reason why things felt different back then.

In college, I shared. 

Not the modern-day, “I’m gonna post this on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter” type share.

But a whole different type of heart-opening, shed-all-barriers, soul-fulfilling share.

Being a part of UniCamp meant we would have 1-2 retreats over the course of our Spring quarter. In the fall, we would do retreats with the leadership crew. And, when our week at camp happened, we shared our life stories with our campers. Hoping that if we opened up about our struggles, they’d feel comfortable opening up and sharing their own with us.

And, though our retreats consisted of icebreakers and training and team building activities, there was also one night that we dedicated to sitting down and opening up about life. And, boy, did people open up.

There’s something so sacred about giving people the space to speak.

So much of our life is spent conversing with one another. But it’s amazing the kind of self-discovery that can come out if you just open up without receiving a response.

At these retreats, everyone held space for everyone else. 

And everyone shed layer after layer until they were sitting there, completely raw and exposed. This night of sharing would start around 8 or 9PM and would often go until 1AM or even later. People would shift around uncomfortably as their feet started to tingle and their limbs started to fall asleep. But not a single person would get up and move. In fact, you could actually observe that as each hour passed, people started to lay down on one another, scoot closer to each other, place their head in someone else’s lap.

These kinds of sharings change people.

They truly allowed me to be the happiest version of myself.

And I was reminded of that this past weekend when we all did a similar thing in Seattle for Hema’s bachelorette party.

It’s why I came back feeling so much lighter. It’s why I walked into work on Monday feeling like nothing could tamper with my mind and my heart.

And it just makes so much sense.

We hold all of this anger and sadness inside of us without even realizing it. Something negative happens and, instead of dealing with it or feeling the emotions, we try to throw ourselves into something else to distract us so we don’t have to deal with the yucky feelings of being sad. And, when we do this over and over again, we just keep covering it up with shit.

But throwing more shit on top of your shit doesn’t actually deal with the shit.

You get it?

But allowing yourself the time to properly process whatever it is that you’re going through – whether it be through a forum of sharing at a retreat or privately writing about it in a journal – means that the stuff doesn’t pile up.

In fact, when we completely strip ourselves of the things that are holding us back, we open ourselves up to an abundance of love.

So much love.

The kind of love where it’s just so palpable and REAL.

I can vividly remember a specific interaction that my friend and I shared in the kitchen of a house we rented for our retreat. We had been singing songs from the musical, Rent, at an obnoxiously-high volume. And, after one of the songs ended, he looked over at me and said, “I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun being sober.”

That one sentence described these UniCamp retreats perfectly.

We didn’t need alcohol. We didn’t need any sort of entertainment.

All we needed was each other. And the willingness to share and be open and let each other into our hearts and our minds. 

I can’t say that I will ever get my college metabolism back.

Bummer.

But I do know now that these sharings are something I’ve been missing immensely. Without even realizing it.

But they don’t have to be limited to my college life. They are something that I can continue to experience – even now. I can incorporate them into my every day life.

Because, as an adult, with so many responsibilities and so many pushes and pulls on your time and energy, it’s when we need it the most.

Questions of the Day:

• How do you effectively deal with some of the stresses in your life?
• Are you a more private person or do you “wear your heart on your sleeve?”