The Sadness And The Joy

“It’s okay to feel sad”, my friend Heidi was telling me the other day. Which I felt was the softest and most thoughtful thing a friend could tell me.

Things have been… Uneasy, lately.
The year 2020 keeps challenging us, moving us and pushing us to our limits. Wherever we are in the world we can feel the thin layer that’s separating us from the chaos.

The second she told me that, I felt better. I’d been holding on so strong, trying to keep things going, to be there for the people around me, to make sense of the world. But what she reminded me is that sometimes it’s okay to just let go.

“It’s okay to feel sad”, that softness is the exquisite freedom that is born in friendship and intimacy, where we don’t need to be anything else than what we are. So, I let myself feel sad. The clouds of sadness slowly passed, and one day, I remembered how I had learned that joy is a feeling we cultivate.

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Commitment.

It had appeared to me a few years ago, as I was trying to explore the idea of maternity with …