I'm not suggesting that depression is benevolent or fun. I'm not saying that we need to walk around trumpeting triumph because we feel sad.
What I am asking: in a reality where we run from sadness, fight sadness, soldier on through sadness and plain ignore it, is your sadness still trying to teach you something?
At the core of most difficult emotions, there is another layer of something else. Under anger there may be fear. Under fear, there is usually sadness or grief.
We heal over time. Or we cover up the inconvenient emotions and pretend we can just ignore them. But they tug at our shirts in strange little ways, leaking out in fear reactions or rage.
I'm no psychologist. These are things I've noticed in myself as I've become more aware of who I am, and what healing I have done and need to do. I'm not out of tears, and I kind of hope I never will be. I don't wallow in sadness, and I don't live there all the time. But I am aware that when I feel pain, if I follow it deeply enough, sadness about something lurks at the bottom of it.
And I am learning to let it go from a genuinely more healed place. It's not enlightenment, lord knows. It does feel like making peace, though.
Sadness connects me to compassion at times, and I hope it makes me better at being human. Curing my sad little Internal Girl has made me a much more rounded and loving person.
When I stopped running from it, and embraced it, sadness taught me a lot.
What's the smallest thing you will do today to make friends with yours?
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