What do you do with all your feelings?
In Marcy's Having All the Feels, counselor and therapist Allison Edwards explores how sometimes feeling so many feelings doesn't feel so good at all.
Marcy wanted to be happy. Happy is all she wanted to be. But all her other feelings kept showing up and at the worst times! There was Frustrated and Angry, Sad and Embarrassed, and even Worried and Jealous. Her feelings were there as soon as she opened her eyes each morning, and they followed her around throughout the day. Some days all these feelings just felt like a little too much and she wanted to hide!
Marcy didn't want to feel angry or jealous. And she didn't like feeling sad or embarrassed. Why couldn't she be happy all the time? Then one day when Marcy's feelings disappear, she learns that her feelings don't have to control her, and they might even have a function.
Maybe having all the feels might not be such a bad thing. And that one discovery? Well, it changes everything!
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I felt like this book piggybacked on Disney/Pixar's Inside Out by creating characters that represented each of the feelings that Marcy was feeling. It kind of brought to life all of those feelings in a more concrete way.
I think it's very easy to relate to Marcy, even as adults. I know I felt every one of her emotions as I read through her day. I think kids will recognize a lot of them as well. And I appreciated her experience with having no feelings at all, because that is a scary and unsettling experience.
My favorite part is Marcy saying that she wants Happy all of the time and Happy explains that you can't have one without the others. (I think a lot of adults struggle with this concept as well.) And then once Marcy is able to embrace all of those feelings, she winds up with new ones, Peaceful and Confident. That's something we should be striving to help children achieve. So I thank the author for coming up with this concept. It's definitely one I would add to my classroom library.
Thank you the publisher and to NetGalley for providing me with a requested review copy. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
This sounds really interestiing, I have to check it out.
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