The Beauty and the Heartbreak

There are moments when I least expect it that I’m completely overwhelmed with joy.

It’s not because I’m on some amazing vacation or swimming in the ocean or because life is going just the way I planned. Far from it!

It can happen when I’m doing the most mundane thing, like cleaning the bathrooms. All of a sudden, I’m just overwhelmed by the beauty of being alive.

And then there are moments when I’m overwhelmed with sadness and deep grief.

And again, not necessarily because someone died or anything tragic happened.

Just like joy, because my heart is open, deep grief visits more than I would like. But even that reminds me of my humanity and what it means to be fully alive.

Yesterday, while I was driving, I saw two exhausted firefighters sitting on the side of the road after a 911 call.

And immediately I started thinking about the trauma they hold in their bodies. What they see and experience day in and day out.

How many of them probably have no real outlet to process or heal from any of it because we live in a culture shaped by patriarchy, white supremacy, and greed that tells people to suck it up, keep going, and get back to work.

And I thought about all the ways that unprocessed trauma eventually shows up in their lives, their bodies, their relationships, and their families.

Life is so freaking hard and complicated.

We live in a world where everyday humans are afraid to take the time off they desperately need because they might lose their jobs.

Where healing and taking care of your body and mental health can be too expensive for so many people.

It’s a beautiful and deeply sad world we live in.

And there are days lately when I wake up and think, this might be my last day on social media.

But here I am.

Because I’m watching powerful people use their money and influence to divide regular, everyday people through fear and by othering marginalized human beings. And it’s trickling down.

You can see it in the homophobia, the racism, the cruelty, and just the awful things people are saying and believing about other human beings.

And what is especially hard for me is knowing some of these same people will be sitting in church on Sunday morning.

I watch good people who have spent their lives helping others get thrown away like trash.

Not perfect people.

Honest people who are learning and growing in real time. People who have made mistakes, taken accountability, changed, and continued trying to do good in this world.

And then I watch scammers, predators, and people who have caused tremendous harm be given power, platforms, money, and endless excuses.

Some days, I really struggle to make sense of any of it.

But on days like this, when fear is trying to protect me by telling me to shrink back, get quiet, disconnect, and hide from the world, I try to come back to myself.

I feel my feet on the ground.

I get back into my body.

I settle my nervous system.

I connect with God.

And I remind myself that as hard and heartbreaking as this life can be, there is still so much beauty here too.

There is still joy that can find me while I’m cleaning a bathroom.

There are still people loving each other well.

There are still people showing up.

There are still people showing up for their therapy sessions and doing incredibly hard work to heal, something I also know is a privilege that far too many people don’t have access to.

There are still people choosing kindness.

There are still people fighting for one another.

And I can’t fix all of this. None of us can.

But I can do what I can with what I have.

I can keep healing my own wounds.

I can keep listening so I can learn.

I can keep getting curious about my shadow parts instead of pretending they aren’t there.

Because I know there are times when I’m the hero in my own story. And if I’m not careful, if I stop doing my own work, I can also be the villain in someone else’s.

I don’t want to become so focused on pointing out the harm in everyone else that I stop paying attention to the ways I’m capable of causing harm too.

So I keep doing my work.

I keep loving people.

I keep choosing kindness.

I keep speaking up against injustice.

And I keep paying attention to the beauty without looking away from the suffering.

Maybe that’s part of what it means to be fully alive.

To let ourselves feel both.

The joy and the grief.

The beauty and the heartbreak.

To recognize both the light and the shadow within ourselves.

And to keep choosing love anyway.