What's the Color of Mad?

“ Colours are light’s suffering and joy.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 I thought it would be fun to give a color to each of the emotions. I wondered how to go about choosing, and so I sent off a questionnaire to family and friends to see if I could find any consensus. I got an interesting array of responses and not much consensus. It made me realize just how subjective our experience of color is.  Here are some of the responses from the questionnaire:

 I see love as red (vibrant), fear as black sad as gray

 I would use the blue for "happy" and the yellow for "sad" (think The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman)

 I hesitated at blue for sad, because even though "being blue" is feeling sad, I think of blue as a peaceful, happy, and calming color.

Have you thought of changing the  fonts of each emotion, as well as the color?

I think that you should use primary colors for primary emotions. Then there's warm verses cool colors. Primary colors have an intensity that secondary or tertiary colors lack. There's also tone, or the amount of black or grey in a color

 "What is the color of fear?" The best answer went to dark red. I was thinking "black," but probably it wouldn't work graphically.

 Here are the eight emotions in my book:

 Anger,  Fear,  Sadness,  Shame,  Surprise,  Disgust,  Happiness and  Love . 

 What Color Would You Use For Each  Emotion?

It Takes A Village

While I was writing, Let Your Feelings Show, I got a lot of input from my family. It’s so helpful to get feedback when you’re writing. Writing is a solitary endeavor and sometime you lose perspective. I was so focused on getting the text accurate, that I hadn’t been thinking much about the reader’s experience. When my son read my first draft, he gave me some invaluable advice. He advised using more examples, stories that kids could relate to immediately. So with his help, I began to develop short vignettes to demonstrate each of the emotions.

Then, my daughter, gave me another invaluable piece of advice. She suggested that I needed to include illustrations. She argued that illustrations would anchor the concepts and, of course, she was right. So Illustrations got added.

My husband was my heavy editor. He flagged the text when my language was too adult or not concise. He checked grammar and patiently listened to multiple revisions. Now, I definitely know why people have editors. I, luckily, had a talented and loving family. Not to mention, friends who’s wisdom and support keep me bolstered and made this book better.

Let Your Feelings Show About To Launch

I’m really thrilled to soon be introducing my book, Let Your Feelings Show. Although, I never set out to write this book, it’s been an exciting journey and I’ve learned a lot. It happened because I couldn’t find what I was looking for. I wanted a book to recommend to parents to help them explain emotions to their children. Although there were books about specific emotions, I wanted a basic primer that explained all the emotions and their purpose. Since I couldn’t find it, I just went ahead and wrote it. It’s almost done and I think it’s a really helpful guide. It lays out in clear language and with examples and illustrations the purpose of each of our basic eight emotions. My hope is that all children learn a language for their emotions and it becomes as common as learning shapes, colors or the alphabet.