Sadness Medicine

This is my June 2023 newsletter.

These days, my heart is on a string about six feet underground, like a forgotten fishing line. It’s just down there in the murky water, bobbing along with the current. And that’s okay. I am not trying to reel it back in. I’m not trying to catch any particular fish. It will stay down there as long as it needs to and come home when it’s time. I’m sad. I’m not trying to be anything else. 

I’ve been writing lately about a loss I’ve been going through, and I know many of you can relate. You’ve had your own losses or are maybe even going through one now. And when we’re experiencing a loss, there are a lot of uncomfortable feelings that can come up—anger and sadness being the big ones. So we often resist them. But in my long history of dealing with loss, trauma, and the big feelings that can come with simply being a sensitive person in a world that doesn’t always support that, I’ve learned that one of the absolute most powerful things that you can do to resolve uncomfortable feelings is to feel them. Just feel them. Just let them be there. 

I knew I’d need this photo of me looking out a window one day. (Photo by Yvonne Hanson)

All our core emotions have a purpose. Some of them want us to do something: anger signals that something needs to change, desire makes us move toward something or someone, disgust lets us know that there is a toxicity present we need to get away from, and fear wants us to get away from danger. Sadness, though? Sadness just wants us to sit down. To slow down. To acknowledge and honor the loss. Maybe share it with someone. Sadness could use a hug. 

For some of us, sadness is the hardest emotion to sit with because there isn’t much we can do about it. The doers among us would likely much prefer anger, which gives us energy and ideas and actions. Sadness makes us physically tired. It actually suppresses our immune function. When we’re dealing with a major loss, it’s actually a pretty good idea to treat ourselves as if we’re sick: cuddle up with a blanket and some ice cream or bone broth and watch funny movies until we feel a bit better. 

I think this is partly because major losses scramble our brains. We have to get used to a new reality that is different from the one we were in before. The rules have changed, and we can’t simply go on the way we were before, as much as we may want to. 

At other times in my life when I’ve experienced loss, I’ve resisted the sadness. I’ve gotten angry or busy instead. After one heartbreak, I went out drinking and dancing every night for a week and then woke up with a flu that grounded me for about 72 hours. After another, I decided that jiu-jitsu was my new thing. I wrestled sweaty men and got slammed onto my back several times a week for about six weeks, and then quit and never returned. 

This is Aero, a 10-month-old adopted from the Edmonton Humane Society. She lets my toddler haul her around and she’s the best.

This time, I’m going a little slower. I’m not blaming myself or God (mostly). I blamed my husband for a while but that evaporated when he listened to all my feelings. I went to a conscious dance class where I cried in the corner for about 15 minutes and then lit my hair on fire trying to smell a flower over a prayer candle (my hair and I are fine). I got a cat (no regrets).

I’m not afraid to feel my sadness and I know the simple fact of feeling it will help me get through this. There’s a strange sweetness in allowing sadness to be what it is, in allowing my heart to bob along six feet beneath my body. I can already feel it coming back in little flashes, rolling in and out of my body, changing shape and moving around. There’s medicine in the sadness.