Permission For Both

Grief rarely follows clean rules, and it doesn’t disappear on cue. Today’s content focuses on normalizing the emotional contradictions that show up while grieving, including guilt for moments of joy, and building confidence in your ability to tolerate the full range of what’s real.

Today’s Quick Overview:

🌟 Confidence Builders: Letting grief exist openly…
🗣️ The Overthinking Toolkit: Guilt about feeling joy…
📰 Mental Health News:
🙏 Daily Practice: Holding pain and joy…

Let's acknowledge what absence is making itself known:

What's the shape of the absence you're carrying today? Lost time? A person? A version of life that didn't happen? Honor it by sharing a memory with someone who understands, creating a small ritual, or just admitting out loud that this hurts, and that's okay.

There's no right way to view your difficult experiences. How do you tend to relate to yours?

The Grief You Allow Yourself to Feel

What it is: There's a particular kind of confidence that comes from letting yourself feel grief without rushing to fix it, minimize it, or perform happiness for other people's comfort. This means allowing sadness, loss, or heaviness to exist during a season when everyone expects you to be festive.

It's trusting that your grief is legitimate, that it doesn't need to be resolved on anyone else's timeline, and that you can feel it without apologizing or pretending it isn't there.

Why it works: Pushing grief down or performing through it takes enormous energy and often makes it worse. When you give yourself permission to grieve openly, even during "happy" seasons, you're demonstrating confidence that your emotional reality matters more than social expectations. You're trusting that you can handle difficult feelings without them destroying you.

This week's challenge: Identify one way you've been pushing through grief or performing happiness when you don't actually feel it. Maybe you're avoiding talking about someone who died, pretending the holidays feel normal when they don't, or forcing yourself to participate in traditions that now feel painful. Give yourself permission to acknowledge the grief out loud, even if just to yourself or one trusted person.

Reframe this week: Instead of "I shouldn't feel this sad during the holidays," think "I'm confident enough to feel my grief even when the world expects me to be cheerful."

Try this today: If grief shows up today, whether it's missing someone, mourning a loss, or feeling the weight of what's changed, let yourself feel it for even just sixty seconds without trying to talk yourself out of it. That permission is confidence.

When You Feel Guilty for Having Joy While You're Grieving

What's happening: The holidays are here, and part of you actually wants to enjoy them. You're laughing at dinner, feeling excited about seeing certain people, genuinely having a good moment. Then the guilt crashes in: "How can I be happy right now? Shouldn't I be sadder? Does enjoying this mean I didn't love them enough, or I'm moving on too fast?"

You catch yourself smiling at a gathering, then immediately feel like you're betraying your grief. You wonder if people think you're over it, or if you're dishonoring what you lost by allowing yourself to feel anything other than sad. You're stuck between the version of you that wants to engage with life and the version that feels like grief should define every moment.

Why your brain does this: Grief doesn't come with an instruction manual, so your brain creates rules about what "proper" grieving looks like. Our culture reinforces this by treating grief like a linear process with clear stages, when the reality is messier. Grief and joy actually coexist all the time.

Your brain learned that love equals sadness when someone's gone, so experiencing anything other than sorrow feels like evidence you didn't care enough. But that's backward. The capacity to feel joy again isn't proof you've forgotten, it's proof that love and loss can live alongside new moments.

Today's Spiral Breaker: The "Both/And" Permission

When guilt shows up for feeling something other than grief:

What you need to hear: Grief isn't loyalty. You don't prove you loved someone by refusing to ever feel light again. Your grief doesn't disappear when you smile; it just makes room for complexity.

I can trust that my capacity to feel deeply works both ways. The same heart that knows profound sorrow also knows profound joy.

Think of one moment of unexpected joy that felt especially vivid or meaningful. Your ability to receive that joy was deepened by everything you've survived.

It's okay to feel the full weight of difficult emotions. You're not broken for feeling deeply; you're building capacity to experience the full range of being human.

Notice one moment of sadness or difficulty today without trying to fix it or push it away. Just acknowledge: "This hurts, and that's okay. My ability to feel this is also my ability to feel joy." Let both truths coexist.

When Someone Dismisses Your Sadness With "But It's the Holidays!"

The Scenario: You're feeling sad, grieving, or just emotionally heavy during the holiday season when someone tries to cheer you up by saying "but it's the holidays!" or "you should be happy right now" or "this is supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year." They act like the calendar date should override your genuine feelings, and their forced cheerfulness makes you feel even more isolated and wrong for not feeling festive. You're already struggling, and now you feel guilty for not performing joy.

In-the-Moment Script: "The holidays don't erase what I'm going through. I need space to feel what I'm feeling without pressure to be happy right now."

Why It Works: This clearly states that holidays don't override grief or pain, asks for what you need (space for authentic feelings), and pushes back on the expectation to perform happiness.

Pro Tip: If they continue with "but don't you want to feel better?" or "I'm just trying to help," you can respond: "I know you care, and forcing positivity actually makes me feel worse. The most helpful thing is just accepting where I'm at." Don't let their discomfort with your sadness pressure you into faking emotions you don't have. Your feelings are valid regardless of what the calendar says.

Important: These scripts work best when direct communication is safe and appropriate. Complex situations, including abusive dynamics, certain mental health conditions, cultural contexts with different communication norms, or circumstances where speaking up could escalate harm, often require personalized strategies. A mental health professional familiar with your specific circumstances can help you navigate boundary-setting in ways that fit your specific relationships and keep you safe.

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Evening Reset: Notice, Write, Settle

Picture a canyon carved by a river over thousands of years. The water that shaped those depths was relentless, often harsh, wearing away stone to create vast open space. Now that canyon can hold sunlight in ways a flat plain never could, creating shadows and colors that only exist because of how deeply it was carved. Tonight, you can see your own sorrows as that river: painful, yes, but also creating depth that allows you to hold more light.

Spend three minutes writing: What sorrow has carved depth into me, and how has that depth allowed me to experience joy, love, or beauty more fully than I could have otherwise?

Close your notebook and ask yourself: Where did I experience both pain and beauty today? What difficulty am I resisting that might actually be expanding my capacity? How can I honor tomorrow that my sorrows have made me capable of deeper joy?

"The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain." — Kahlil Gibran

The heart that breaks wide open is the same heart that can hold oceans of joy.

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Coming Friday: After losing someone, daily uplifts matter most on days you feel old, or why simple positive activities provide crucial emotional protection, specifically when grief makes you feel older than your chronological age.

Researched and edited by Natasha. Designed with love by Kaye.

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*The Daily Wellness shares educational content only and is not a substitute for professional medical or mental health advice and diagnosis. Please consult a licensed provider for personalized care.