It’s Ok to Be Sad— Sometimes

Recovery has taught me it’s OK to have feelings. As a child I learned to stuff all of my feelings down to survive in our emotionless, alcoholic household. For most of my life I only felt numb, fearful and angry.

Now I realize that God gave us feelings for a VERY important purpose: To help us process the good and bad in daily life. When we shutdown our feelings, especially the difficult ones, we aren’t able to process what happened and get our emotional balance back.

Sadness is THE healing feeling. It helps us to cry-out the pain of betrayal, disappointment, hurt, shame, guilt and anger. We need to allow ourselves to be sad. It’s OK. It’s necessary— Sometimes. We can’t always be sad. If we are, we’re playing the victim and that’s no good. It eventually leads to depression.

Properly processing sadness brings us to a point of release. We’re able to release the bad that happened, surrender it to our Higher Power, and let go of the hurt and sadness. Once we do, we gain the emotional balance and clarity to forgive and move forward in life. We are able to look for the lesson we learned from what happened, to take that wisdom and to move forward toward inner-peace and happiness again.

I love this song “Sad” by Adam Friedman. It is truly OK to be sad, sometimes!