Be Grateful for Your Sadness

Image: A puddle of sky

By Meghan Ochs

If you can, be grateful for your sadness, for it is a hand that pulls you to presence.

When you walk in your sadness, you see that it makes you stay right here. It sets your feet down firmly; it holds your gaze in place.  

Sadness, for all its fog, has a purpose. And you can choose it, choose to see it as an emotion in service. 

Be sad, and carry it. If it’s raining, stick out your tongue. If the clouds hang low, try and touch them. Sadness isn’t about getting past it. 

Where will you be on your next trip of sadness? Swimming the gray stony river? Smiling behind the man in the self-checkout line who says he’s never had his heart broken? Or will you argue with your sadness, try to choke it? 

What will you choose to do with your sadness? Will you wear it like an obsidian crown? Will you take shelter in your melancholy sweater? Will you be swaddled by the pain? Will you love it? 

If you can, be thankful for your sadness, for being sad means you left your heart open.