We have a habit of looking for meaning when something hurts.
What is this trying to teach me?
Why did this happen?
What am I supposed to learn from this?
Everything happens for a reason, right?
Maybe.
Sometimes.
But sometimes something just sucks.
Not everything that happens is a lesson waiting to be uncovered. Not every difficult experience is secretly preparing you for something better. Not every loss contains a message. Not every shitty thing needs to become a chapter in your personal growth story.
Sometimes you get bad news.
Sometimes someone disappoints you.
Sometimes the thing you really, really didn’t want to happen happens anyway.
And it hurts.
I think we’re often uncomfortable leaving it there.
Especially when we’re used to looking for patterns.
If we can find the reason, maybe we can make the experience feel less arbitrary.
If we can find the lesson, maybe the pain wasn’t wasted.
If we can turn it into growth, maybe we can feel like we got something out of it.
And I understand the impulse.
I do it too.
There is something comforting about believing that everything has a purpose. It can make an unpredictable world feel a little more orderly.
But I don’t believe everything is laid out in advance.
And I don’t believe everything that happens to us was somehow meant to happen.
Life isn’t a story where every terrible chapter was necessary because the ending wouldn’t have worked without it.
Sometimes things happen because things happen.
People make choices.
Bodies do things.
Systems fail.
Circumstances collide.
We get unlucky.
We get lucky.
Other people have agency.
So do we.
There is a lot of uncertainty in being alive.
And I think we can acknowledge that without turning it into nihilism.
Because meaning can still be useful without being mandatory.
You might eventually understand something about yourself because of what happened.
You might notice a pattern.
You might change your mind.
You might make a different choice next time.
You might even look back years later and realize that something painful changed the direction of your life.
That’s okay.
But you don’t have to know that now.
You don’t have to squeeze a lesson out of something while it’s still hurting.
You don’t have to be grateful for the experience.
You don’t have to believe it happened for you.
And you certainly don’t have to believe that you somehow attracted it, manifested it, or failed to learn the lesson that would have prevented it.
Sometimes the most honest thing you can say is:
This really fucking sucks.
And then you can make dinner.
You can call someone you love.
You can cry.
You can be angry.
You can go for a walk.
You can watch something stupid.
You can do absolutely nothing useful.
You can keep living.
Maybe meaning will come later.
Maybe it won’t.
I don’t think self-trust requires us to know which.
Maybe it means trusting ourselves enough to meet what happened without immediately needing to explain it.
There is a difference between making meaning from an experience and believing the experience was meant to happen.
There is a difference between learning from something and believing you need the suffering in order to learn.
There is a difference between finding something valuable afterward and deciding the painful thing was somehow valuable because it happened.
We can let those things remain separate.
Sometimes life gives us something beautiful.
Sometimes it gives us something difficult.
Sometimes it gives us something that is simply, spectacularly, profoundly shitty.
We don’t have to make it profound.
We don’t have to make it beautiful.
We don’t have to make it useful.
Sometimes things just suck.
And maybe that’s enough truth for today.
Tag: relief
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Maybe You’re Not Supposed to Be Over It Yet
There’s a strange thing that happens after something difficult.
You feel it.
Maybe you cry. Maybe you get angry. Maybe you finally admit that something hurt more than you wanted it to.
And then, eventually, you have a good day.
You make breakfast. Answer some emails. Laugh at something your kid says. Put the laundry away. Maybe you even forget about the thing for several hours.
And because you’re functioning again, a little voice can start suggesting that you must be finished.
Okay. I’m fine now.
I should be over this.
But what if those aren’t the same thing?
What if being able to carry on with your life doesn’t mean the thing is finished with you?
I think we sometimes imagine difficult feelings as having a tidy beginning, middle, and end.
Something happens.
We feel the feelings.
We work through them.
We learn whatever we’re supposed to learn.
And then we put the whole thing neatly behind us and get back to normal.
But I’m not sure people work that way.
Sometimes something matters and then becomes quieter.
It moves from the middle of your attention to the back of your mind.
You’re making dinner and suddenly you remember something someone said three days ago.
You’re driving home and realize you’re still angry.
You’re folding towels and it occurs to you that you’re sad about something you thought you’d already dealt with.
Or maybe nothing happens at all.
Maybe you simply notice, Huh. I guess I’m not quite finished with that.
That doesn’t necessarily mean you need to do anything.
You don’t have to pull the feeling back into the foreground and start dissecting it.
You don’t have to journal about it.
You don’t have to figure out what it means.
You don’t have to make a plan.
You don’t even have to decide whether you’re still allowed to feel it.
Sometimes something can sit on the backburner while you get on with your life.
I think we can mistake that for being stuck.
But there’s a difference between being unable to move forward and moving forward while something is still settling.
Those aren’t opposites.
You can have a genuinely good day while something in you is still tender.
You can laugh and still be grieving.
You can feel relieved and still be angry.
You can enjoy yourself without having resolved everything that happened.
You can even feel better without being over it.
Maybe that’s part of why I like the idea of a backburner.
Not everything needs to be cooking at full heat all the time.
Some things can simmer quietly.
They can exist without demanding your full attention.
And sometimes, after you’ve had a little distance, you understand something you couldn’t see when the feeling was taking up the whole room.
Sometimes you realize what mattered.
Sometimes you realize what didn’t.
Sometimes you discover that the thing you thought was about one small moment was actually about a pattern.
Sometimes you decide you’re ready to put it down.
And sometimes you don’t.
I don’t think self-trust requires us to know which one it’s going to be in advance.
It might simply mean trusting ourselves enough not to force the ending.
Because moving forward isn’t always the same as moving on.
Sometimes moving forward looks remarkably ordinary.
You make the coffee.
You answer the email.
You pick up the groceries.
You laugh.
And somewhere in the background, something is still finding its place.
That’s okay.
You don’t have to return to who you were before something happened just because you’re able to function again.
You don’t have to put everything behind you to keep going.
You can keep living your life while something is still settling inside you.
Maybe you can let today be today.
And if it comes back tomorrow?
You can come back, too.
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Welcome
This is not a post about fixing anything.
It’s an invitation to pause, to notice, and to sit with what’s present—without needing to resolve it.
If you’ve found your way here because something feels off, unclear, or quietly resistant, you don’t need to name it yet.
You’re allowed to sit with this.I don’t offer answers here.
Not because I don’t have opinions, or experiences, or things I’ve learned the hard way; I do. But because answers, when they arrive too quickly, have a way of replacing something more important.
Listening.
This space exists for something slower than certainty. It exists for the questions that surface when you finally stop pushing through, the ones you might not have known how to ask because you were too busy coping, performing, or keeping things moving.
If you’re here, there’s a good chance something in your life isn’t working the way it used to. You may not know exactly what it is yet. You might not have words for it. You might only have a vague sense of friction, fatigue, or quiet resistance.
That’s enough.
You don’t need a fully formed understanding to be here. You don’t need to articulate anything neatly. You don’t need to arrive with insight, or clarity, or a plan for what comes next.
You’re allowed to sit with this.
A lot of spaces promise resolution. They want to help you fix, optimize, heal, or transcend. Often, very quickly. Often with the best of intentions. But I’ve learned, both personally and through years of listening to other women, that rushing to make meaning can become another way of overriding ourselves.
Sometimes the most honest thing you can do is admit, quietly, that something feels off, and stay there for a while.This is not a space for emotional bypassing. It’s not a place where discomfort needs to be reframed into a lesson, or smoothed over so it’s easier for others to digest. There’s no expectation that you move on, stay positive, or make your feelings productive.
There is no requirement to be consistent. No urgency to get anywhere. No pressure to turn what you’re feeling into something useful.
Insight can arrive slowly.
I’m not here as an authority over your inner life. I’m here alongside you, holding space for inquiry without coercion.What you notice, when you notice it, belongs to you. You don’t owe anyone an explanation for it, and you certainly don’t need to make it comfortable for someone else before it’s true for you.
If this feels like an exhale, you’re in the right place.
You’re allowed to sit with what’s present, without judgment or demand. You’re allowed to take your time. You’re allowed to feel your feelings without having to justify them.
Nothing needs to change right now.