A friend reminded me of something important this week.
She’s brilliant. Strong. Accomplished. The kind of person who quietly carries more than most people ever realize. Last year, she lost her husband unexpectedly. Today, she is navigating life as a single parent while spending precious time with her children who are studying in different parts of the world. And recently, she suffered a serious fall that will take many months to heal.
When difficult things happen, our instinct is often to search for meaning. “What is the universe trying to teach me?” “Why is this happening?” “What lesson am I supposed to learn?”
But lately I’ve been wondering if we ask those questions too quickly. Sometimes the most courageous thing we can do is simply be with the experience. To acknowledge the sadness, the frustration, the fear, the disappointment. Without rushing to explain it away.
Because emotions don’t disappear when we refuse to feel them. They simply wait. They wait in our bodies. They wait in our thoughts. They wait in the stories we tell ourselves.
And often, the energy we spend avoiding our pain becomes greater than the energy required to face it.
When I was diagnosed with cancer, people often told me to be positive. I heard, “everything happens for a reason.” “God must have a plan.” And all this was true. But the truth is that it took me months before I was ready to get to that point. Before hope came grief. Before resilience came fear. Before courage came acceptance.
For nearly six months, my work wasn’t to find a lesson. My work was simply to sit with the reality that my life had changed. To mourn what I thought the future would look like. To allow myself to feel what needed to be felt. To be able to ask for help – which I found so difficult. To not be the superwoman my family was accustomed to. I wasn’t handed this wisdom on day 1 – I had to wrestle my way toward it. Only then was I able to take the next step.
Robin Sharma writes about honoring our emotions rather than bypassing them. Not every painful moment arrives carrying an immediate lesson wrapped in a bow. Sometimes life is asking us to slow down long enough to experience what is true.
And perhaps healing begins not when we understand our pain, but when we stop running from it. Then, in its own time, something remarkable happens.
The sadness softens. The fear loosens its grip. The questions become less urgent. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, we find ourselves ready for the next step. Not because the pain disappeared, but because we finally made room for it.
For anyone carrying something heavy today: you don’t have to turn your pain into a lesson immediately. You don’t have to be positive. You don’t have to have the answers. You can simply be where you are. And trust that wisdom, healing, and meaning will arrive when they are ready.
Are there emotions you are trying to rush through lately? Have you ever gone through something that couldn’t be fixed, explained, or reframed right away?
