Sadness Has Much to Tell Us


What’s missing from your life? If the answer isn’t “you,” in other words, if you’ve been showing up for yourself, but there’s still a sense that something’s missing, what is it and how do you find out? A good way to start is to look to your feelings. What makes you sad? If we feel great sadness about something, it could very likely be the missing piece.

For example, often times the missing piece is hidden because we aren’t being truthful with ourselves. Maybe we’re comfortable with befriending ourselves now and we’re happy spending time alone with ourselves. We’re busy at work, probably busier than we’d really like to be. We keep in touch with family and we make time to have dinner or a cup of coffee with friends here and there. Everything seems good on the surface, but now that we’re really getting in touch with our feelings, we realize that there is a deep sadness inside. It’s a sadness we’ve been ignoring because it represents a difficult truth.

And that difficult truth is that we still want a serious long-term companionship with one very special person. Maybe we haven’t felt ready yet, or maybe we are just too fearful of messing things up again even though we are healthier people. Or maybe finding that person, being able to make ourselves available to him/her, is going to require us to shake up our lives in ways that will demand major changes. And we’re not sure we’re ready to invest in those changes; especially if they could involve a change of careers or moving to a new city.

Still, our hearts are sad, and our sadness is very real. We can’t deny it. There is a major piece to our puzzle of completeness, of happiness, that is still missing. We are no longer the missing piece. Someone else, someone we need in our life, is the final piece and we can no longer deny it, or the loneliness we feel without them.

Showing up for ourselves means more than learning to love and honor ourselves before others. It also means being ruthlessly honest with ourselves. Any feeling of great sadness is telling us that we are still grieving something that is either in need of further healing or that is missing completely from our lives. And a deep sadness over the sense that something’s missing tells us that what’s missing is indeed essential to our well-being. We don’t truly ache or mourn over passing fancies. If the sadness is old and familiar then it’s something that we have been running from for a long time, and we need to stop running and finally face it.

Our sadness is here to heal us. We need to listen to and honor it. If it’s telling us that we need to be open to finding that life-time companion, then we need to open our hearts to whatever we are being called to do to help ourselves to be complete, whole and happy in all the right ways—just as God has always intended for us. Listen to your heart. Be attentive to your feelings and honor them. Allow them to lead you into the light of a new day with new possibilities and ask your Higher Power for the courage to make your life right in every way possible.

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