I'm staying

Dear fellow travelers,

There are days when nothing spectacular happens. You get up. Your body feels tired. Something inside you feels sad. The world isn't any brighter or darker than it was yesterday.

And yet, everything is different.

I used to think that strength meant not feeling sadness. Or getting rid of it as quickly as possible.

I had strategies. Fill up my calendar. Get out among people. Stay up too late. Something had to drown out the silence.

Today, a sad day looks different.

I rest. I eat. I dance. I sew. I write. I make a beaded necklace. I sit in the sun.

Not because I want to get rid of the sadness. But because I can live with it.

She's no longer behind the wheel. She's just along for the ride.

I used to have to escape my sadness. Today, I walk alongside it.

At some point, I realized that self-love doesn't mean always feeling good. Sometimes it simply means not leaving your own body alone. Not fighting against it. Not trying to persuade it. But staying with it.

Maybe that's what growing up is all about. It's not that we no longer have difficult feelings. It's that we learn to live with them.

There's a sentence that came to mind today. Very quietly. Very simply.

I'll hold on.

In the past, I probably wouldn't have understood that sentence at all. Today, I know exactly what it means.

It's not that the sadness has gone away. It's just that I no longer run away when it shows up.

With love and my hand on my heart,
Jeannette