The shadow side

It’s been over 13 weeks since I have been employed. 13 weeks since I have worked full time as a physical therapist. 13 weeks since I have called a place my home. 13 weeks since I have been alone, in a space of my own. 13 weeks since I have woken up and known exactly what my day would hold. 13 weeks since I left a predictable, safe and stable life for adventures unknown. 13 weeks of joy, excitement, play, rest, sadness and uncertainty.

It has been a wild and wonderful 13 weeks but also an exhausting and overwhelming journey. I had no idea what I was throwing myself into, how could I? Truly, I was better equipped than most from my past life as a travel PT. I typically would end a work assignment prior to knowing where I was going for my next job. Sometimes I lived in that uncertainty for a week and sometimes a month. But the entire time, I knew I would end up with a job as a PT somewhere in the states. There was always a finite end to the period of uncertainty I stepped into. I thought this would feel the same as that, but I was very wrong.

This time, I ended my job not knowing anything. Not knowing how long this time of uncertainty will last, where I will end up, what my job will look like, or who I will become. There is no end date written in stone anywhere that I can cling to. Taking time off to travel, explore and create was something I romanticized in my mind for years. I’m realizing that I made my own bed, now I must lie in it.

Of course, this is not the first time I have expressed the frustration and instability that I feel, but I feel like I understand it a tiny bit better now. It all comes back to contrast, one of the first things I wrote about when I started this journey. As a simple reminder, it is fully possible to hold two conflicting emotions at once. I am incredibly grateful for this time off and have found so much joy, peace and ease in the past few months. I can also admit the fear, exhaustion and deep grief that have surfaced in my life during the same exact time.

Holding both of these contrasting experiences and not ranking one as good and one as bad has been an interesting learning curve. I thought I had understood this concept so well, but here I am, muddling through it again. Going through a divorce was a sharp lesson in this space. I worked so fucking hard to meet every experience with equanimity during that time, and honestly, I succeeded more often than I imagined I would. Looking back, I am still in awe of how I was able to handle that time in my life with so much grace and compassion. That same grace and compassion feel a bit harder to find in this moment. Perhaps it is because I am in this current position completely by my own choice.

I am a strong believer that life unfolds the way it does to help us learn what we need to in this lifetime. I am not questioning my actions or expressing regret. I am simply reminding myself out loud that some lessons need repeating. That even though I moved forward with this choice before calculating all the consequences of my actions, it does not mean it was the wrong choice. Clearly, this is a lesson I must fully embody to move forward in this life.

It also is a strong reminder that what I am navigating through is territory that society tends to shy away from. This concept of exciting and drastic changes being not only times of celebration but also times of grief, is rarely discussed. In general, our society loves to keep the light on the shiny things and keep the scary bits in the dark. But all this does is make people who are sensitive to it all feel more isolated and alone.

There are few changes that are 100% good or 100% bad. Almost all changes carry weight in both realms. A marriage is a time of celebrating the love of two individuals choosing to do life together. It is also a time of grieving the independence and self sufficiency that came before. The death of a loved one can feel heavy and unbearably dark. It is also a time of remembering how wonderful life can be, especially when surrounded by love. The birth of a child is a beautiful time of reveling in the magic of new life. It is also a time of grieving so much time, energy and a past self that you will never recover. The loss of a job is often a strong loss of identity and very painful. It can also be a time of wonderful growth that needs to happen.

It seems that one side always gets highlighted, whether the positive or negative. We react in a way that is socially acceptable by congratulating the newly weds and new parents and giving condolences to the ones who lost family or a job.

I find it interesting that it’s often expressed that good things can come from bad events but rarely the opposite. This idea of a silver lining is fed to us so frequently. The famous quote from Albus Dumbledore in the third Harry Potter movie expresses this clearly. “Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.” Why do we seek the light in everything but never discuss the value of darkness?

Where is the messaging to remind us that sadness may arise during moments of joy? That this truth is as evident as the opposite one we hear so often. I found a beautiful quote from Japanese author Haruki Murakami that embodies this idea beautifully. “Where there is light, there must be shadow, where there is shadow there must be light. There is no shadow without light and no light without shadow.”

Perhaps that is the answer. Joy and grief are inextricably linked. Pain and happiness cannot be fully separate. These opposites cannot be disentangled as much as we try. Life is not about finding a way around the shadow to only get the light. Life is about accepting that if we want to live in the light, we will always have to honor our shadow.

At the end of the day, my current reality is not meeting the expectations I held unknowingly in my mind. The joy I am finding in the freedom of this time is accompanied by a shadow of sadness. There is grief surfacing from the life I had to leave to make this possible. As much as I have loved this time, it has not been all rainbows. As someone who thrives off stability, part of me is very challenged by the instability I’ve created. But at the end of the day, I know this is exactly where I am meant to be.

My curious nature has kept me searching for ways to express these ideas, but for now, I have more questions than answers. Why does sometimes the shadow win and sometimes the sun win? Where do these ingrained beliefs come from and are they still true? Why do we love the contrast of black and white and sometimes it makes us feel so unwell? What is truth, actual truth, and how do we know?

There may be a silver lining to every dark cloud, but there is also a shadow created by every ray of light. Let’s each work on holding space for the spectrum of emotions that come with any change without judgement. There is no right or wrong way to feel about life, as long as you meet it all with curiosity.