Embracing Sadness

I am good at leaning into my emotions. I laugh with happiness when I am mountain biking, scream with excitement when launching myself off a steep bit of terrain while skiing, and squeal with delight when receiving a gift. I can easily drop tears when doing a gratefulness prayer in yoga, kiss my puppies with love, yell when I am overcome with anger, and kick something when frustration gets the best of me.  

I have big emotions and generally, I don’t struggle to express them. However, I have noticed, that there are exceptions, mostly in expressing emotions like melancholy, longing and sadness. 

I experience these emotions more subtlety and it can take me some time to realize that sadness is coming up in me.  I realize that my emotions just need some space to express themselves. Like most people, my first reaction in noticing sad feelings is to begin a mental inventory about why I shouldn’t be sad.  I am healthy, I have abundant resources, I have great friendships, healthy children, and the list goes on.

I know from experience, that sadness and longing doesn’t need to be shoved down; that it should be felt and given space, like any of our other emotions. 

When we give our emotions the time and space they need to be experienced, they come and go far more easily than if they are put to one side. I know this intellectually and yet; it still feels indulgent to let myself be sad or to lean into melancholy. 

Recently, I have been experimenting with giving my melancholy some space. I have listened to sad music and I have sat in the sauna by myself just breathing. I have avoided social events and instead have walked alone along the lake front, I have sat with my journal and let my feelings leak out. I have told my husband I need to be alone with myself for a few days, and he has given me space.

I am realizing that my emotions have struggled to keep up with the changes in my life. 

In the last two years, I have been through almost constant change and formidable challenges. Significant injuries and illnesses with my husband have been an ongoing challenge for almost three years.  We have moved countries. I have coped well with the amount of change, and I am proud about how much I have grown spiritually and emotionally through the journey of change. And yet, there is part of me that is trying to process the changes at a deeper level. Just as I am fully embracing the excitement of new experiences, I am also grieving the loss of old patterns, and routines. 

I am grieving my old life. 

It is possible to both be living a new chapter of my life, while still grieving what I am letting go of.  I see that now, that one does not negate the other.  It is okay to feel sad at what I have lost, while also embracing the adventure and inner growth that is coming from the new environment that I find myself in. I find it interesting that when I allow myself to feel the sadness, I also begin to unpack some of the things that are happening in my life. The sadness is signalling to me, that I need a bit more alone time to decompress on a regular basis. Like so many of you, I have a busy life, and my boundless energy can sometimes lead me to commit to too much and not leave adequate time to be alone. 

My sadness reminds me not only that I love being alone, but that I need it, and that need deserves to be respected.  

My sadness has given me an opportunity to acknowledge that I have been afraid for my husband’s health many times over the last two years.  Just acknowledging that fear feels good, it makes sense to me that feeling fear does take its toll, and it’s good for me to bring it out into the open, to even talk about it with my husband.  

 I talked to a friend about my sadness, a friend that I knew wouldn’t shove it somewhere by reminding me of my blessings. She sat with me as I talked to her, and she didn’t try to solve it or change it. This felt so good, to be with someone who could sit with my sadness, even acknowledge some of her own, without needing to find a solution. The conversation wasn’t linear, we touched upon the grey days, the business of the last months, the change that is inherent in our life stage. Funny, because just saying out loud, “I am feeling sad”, to someone whom I love feels good and it is helpful. It’s reassuring to know that I am not alone in my feelings, that a friend sees me, and even if she isn’t feeling what I am feeling in that moment, she has the empathy to know I am struggling. 

 As I write this, my sadness is lessoning. I realize it has been a couple of weeks of building to let this emotion out into the light of day. I realize that every time I do this, I am learning something about myself, and that learning is not only helpful to me, but to others. Next time I begin to feel sad, I hope it will take me a little less time to let it rise to the surface, and a little less time to find the courage to express it. Melancholy and sadness are emotions, and our emotions need to be expressed or they will get stuck inside us and begin to warp our perceptions of the world around us.  The most profound words in my favourite children’s movie Shrek are “better out than in”. Touché