Making Room in our Hearts

By Anne Marie Rodgers Health & Wellness Advocate PHJ Board Member

There are seasons of life when our emotions refuse to organize themselves the way we expect.

We expect to feel emotions one at a time; we describe ourselves as happy, sad, frustrated, upset. Many of us believe emotions are supposed to arrive one at a time. If we are grieving, happiness somehow should feel inappropriate; if we are happy or celebratory, we must be "over" the grieving process of loss.

Our hearts don't work that way.

The reality is we can feel conflicting emotions, all at the same time. We can be deeply grateful and deeply sad. We can laugh with someone we love and, moments later, feel the ache of someone—or something—we have lost. We can be excited about what is ahead while grieving what we are leaving behind.

Grief and joy can live side by side in our hearts.

One does not diminish the other.

Grief is not always about death. We grieve relationships, seasons of life, careers, identities, homes, friendships, expectations, and versions of ourselves we once knew. Sometimes the loss is obvious. Other times, it is simply the quiet realization that something will never be exactly as it was.

And still, joy finds us.

It might arrive in a conversation with a friend, sunlight through a window, the laughter of someone we love, a beautiful meal, a song, a walk outside, or an unexpected moment when life simply feels good.

The instinct can be to push that joy away because grief is still present.

But we don't have to choose.

Mindfulness teaches us that we don't always need to change what we are feeling. Sometimes the invitation is simply to notice what is here and make room for it.

This hurts.

And this is beautiful.

I miss what was.

And I am grateful for what is.

Both can be true.

Instead of immediately trying to escape sadness or hold tightly to happiness, we can create enough space to experience the fullness of the moment. We can allow ourselves to be human—not perfectly healed, not endlessly positive, but present.

Grief may still be sitting beside us when joy returns. Let it.

Laugh when something is funny. Notice beauty when it appears. Let yourself enjoy the moment without believing you have betrayed what you have lost.

And when grief rises again, meet that too.

One breath. One moment. One gentle return to yourself.

Perhaps healing isn't the moment grief finally disappears.

Perhaps healing is discovering that our hearts are spacious enough to hold both the sorrow of what we have lost and the joy of still being here.

Our hearts are big - learning to make space in our hearts for all of the emotion, not either/or, can be fulfilling, enriching, and complex. Allow grief and joy to sit together - and allow ourselves to release the expectation that our hearts only hold one or the other.

In the PHJ Way.

Ann Marie