Yesterday was World Suicide Prevention day and today is the 18th anniversary of the terrorist attack of 9/11. It’s a rainy, gloomy morning in Minnesota, and sometimes it feels like sadness is all around us. This is a feeling and sentiment that I’ve been hearing often in my work and in my life – sometimes it feels hopeless, and sometimes there is more darkness than there is light. We have days like this. We all do.
The most pain I’ve felt in my life is when I tried to deny those feelings, shove them down or pretend they didn’t exist; the best I’ve felt is when I let myself feel them, and then went “through the tunnel” (as a yoga teacher of mine says) and came out the other side. Because there is always another side. No feeling lasts forever, including sadness, depression, even hopelessness. Moreover, no feeling is as painful as we let ourselves believe. Sadness is just a feeling. Hopelessness is just a feeling. It’s a body response, and a spirit response, and the best thing we can do is pay attention to it, not judge it or try to stop it, but to see what it has to tell us. And then do something about it.
The key is to keep moving forward. We can let ourselves feel our feelings, to sit in them for a while, and then the job of life is to keep going. It might mean doing something to shake up our routine or to get out of our own heads. It might mean reaching out to talk to someone. It might mean taking a mental health day from work (please, employers, make this an option for everyone! Talk to me about how to make it happen!) and doing something to take care of yourself. When we do these things for ourselves, we can create a little bit more light in the world. When we tell someone else about our struggle and they feel they can open up about their own – there is a little bit more light. This is how we combat the darkness – by creating one little spark of light at a time.
Always feel welcome to ask a question or share your experience and create a little light here!
Jessie Everts, PhD LMFT
