Letting Go With Love When the Happy and Hard Land Together
I’m at dinner with Dave, my husband, and he looks over and asks, what’s up?
He can tell I’ve been crying. I can’t get the words out. He starts guessing, and I keep shaking my head. No, that’s not it. That’s not it either. (Bless Dave, he keeps guessing like there's a prize for landing on the right feeling. 😂)
My oldest just landed in New York City to start her first big job, hundreds of miles from home. I have three grown girls, and I call them my little birdies. When all five of us are under one roof, the nest feels safe and certain, everybody comfy, everybody home.
And now one little birdie has flown right out of it. 🥲
Maybe you have kids. Maybe you don’t. Either way, you know this ache.
Maybe for you it’s the house you finally sell, you’re over the moon about the new place and still cry in the empty living room. Maybe it’s a job you love, ending right as a new chapter cracks open. Maybe it’s a relationship that runs its course, you’re in love until you’re not, or a friendship that quietly wraps up.
Same doorway. 🚪
You step into something new, and you leave something you loved on the other side.
✦ Why the Same Goodbye Can Be Happy and Hard at Once
The happy and the hard can land together, softly, in the same place at the same time, without colliding.
One of my teachers, Tony Robbins, says it like this: What you focus on, you feel. Your mind is powerful, and you create a lot of your emotions by where you point your focus.
When I look at my daughter flying the nest, the new job she’s so excited about, old friends and new ones, I’m so happy for her. When I look at the chapter that just closed, all her girlfriends who used to pile into my kitchen because we live in a college town, that part is over and it hurts.
I feel two completely different feelings depending on where I look. 👀
Sadness almost always carries the message of loss, or less. So next time the sad rolls in, get curious with it instead of brushing it off. Ask yourself:
Where am I looking right now?
-
At what’s ending, what’s behind me, what I’m losing?
-
Or at what’s opening, what’s growing, what I’m gaining?
Shift your gaze, and the other feeling is right there, hiding in the very same place. ✨
✦ The Silver-Lining Trap (and How I Catch Myself)
I’m an Inspirational Mama, so I’m always looking for the bright side, almost anywhere. Ask my family, it’s a gift and also quite annoying at times. 🙄 Knowing that about myself is how I catch what I’m up to, and if you’ve never met your own pattern, your personality type is a great place to start.
The second a hard feeling shows up, I have a habit of leaping straight to the good part and skipping the hard. Some people call it spiritual bypassing. With my daughter, it sounds like, well, she’s happy, so I’m happy, and just like that, I’m jump right over my own sadness without ever feeling it.
But those feelings don’t disappear. They wait and then they come out all at once. I know this work. I teach this work. And I still can fall into the pattern, hello waterworks over a plate of pasta. 😭
✦ Your Head Speaks in Thoughts. Your Heart Speaks in Emotions.
I wake up early the next morning, which is when a lot of my clearest stuff arrives. I take my quiet time with spirit first, journaling, stickers, my astro planner, a little tarot and numerology, all of it just to loosen up my thinking mind so I can hear what’s underneath.
And the insight that lands is this: Your head speaks in thoughts. Your heart speaks in emotions. 💛
Maybe you hand your head every microphone in the house and leave your heart beating in the other room. I know I do. Carl Jung, the psychologist, taught that becoming whole means integrating all of you, the happy and the sad, the light and the shadow, the parts you love and the parts you’d rather not look at.
In holistic healing, there’s a saying that you have to feel it to heal it, and this is exactly why. Listen only to your head, and you skip past half of what healing asks of you. Maybe more.
So I’m letting myself sit in the sad, uncomfy feelings instead of stuffing them down. Honoring the loss. Honoring the part of me that feels a little less needed today.
Healing is your head and your heart getting back on the same team, and some days that means holding both the happy and the hard at once, even when it’s unsettling. 🤍
✦ Letting Go With Love Means Honoring Both
If you’re anything like me, part of you dodges the hard feeling because it looks like a black hole you’ll fall into and never climb out of. It isn’t. Your feelings have a bottom. You can’t cry forever, and at some point nothing else even comes out, right? 😂
Your nervous system is built to protect you. So give yourself a few minutes to feel the feeling, while gently reminding yourself, I’m safe, even in this discomfort. That’s how you move through an emotion instead of staying stuck in it.
And if it’s more than everyday sad, if what you’re carrying is real trauma, that’s not a few-minutes-at-the-kitchen-table thing, and you’re not meant to carry it alone. That’s where a good therapist comes in, someone trained to hold you in a truly safe space while you feel it. 🥹
Dr. Bruce Perry, the psychiatrist who spent thirty years studying trauma and wrote What Happened to You? with Oprah Winfrey, found that healing doesn’t come from one big breakthrough. It comes from small, doable moments of safety and connection, again and again, what he calls therapeutic dosing. So whether it’s a few minutes at your kitchen table or the steady care of a good therapist, it’s the little moments that heal you.
And those little moments aren’t only found in a therapist’s office. They happen in a hard conversation with a friend who gets it, in a room full of women who let you say the sad part out loud and stay right there with you.
You don’t have to pick between the happy and the hard. You get to feel both.
And honoring both, that’s how you let go with love. 🕊️
xo,
Dr. Sue
P.S. This is exactly why I built the Soulfull Path membership, a circle of women showing up together week after week, honoring both the happy and the hard, one small safe moment at a time. That steady connection is what the science points to, and it’s what I want for you. If you're tired of sorting the big feelings out alone, come find your people. We've got you. Join us here → 🌱
P.P.S. Join me live Thursday at 11:30am Eastern on Substack. This week: The Simple, Uplifting Truth About Somatic Healing. See you there. 💛
