Learning to sit with sorrow

I’ve been thinking this morning about the emotion I tend to avoid the most.

Sorrow.

Not the polite, conversational kind. The deeper version. The heavy, quiet ache that shows up when something doesn’t go the way you hoped. When a relationship changes. When expectations collapse. When life feels unfair or unresolved.

For most of my life, I treated feelings like problems to solve or obstacles to remove. If something hurt, I tried to move past it quickly because I never wanted to become a victim to it.

But what I understand now is this: feelings don’t disappear just because we ignore them. Feelings disappear when they are listened to and understood.

And when they aren’t heard, they don’t quietly leave.

They get louder.

Sadness becomes heaviness. Disappointment becomes bitterness. Uncertainty becomes anxiety. Anger sharpens its edges. The emotion doesn’t go away — it simply changes form.

When I feel sorrow I remind myself that feelings don’t define me, and that they are simply visitors.

They arrive with information. They carry messages. And they ask to be seen.

As Freud once wrote:

“Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive, and will come forth later, in uglier ways.”

We don’t heal by suppressing what we feel. We heal by letting it move through us.

Learning to sit with sorrow is a practice I’ve had to develop. It has meant allowing space for feelings to exist without judging them or turning them into a story about who I am.

It meant learning to say:

“Okay. You’re here. I see you”.

I’ve learned that emotions don’t need to be battled. They just need to be welcomed. Not indulged or dramatized. Just acknowledged.

I have learned that there is enormous power in allowing a feeling to be felt.

And that by giving an emotion space, something surprising happens — it softens. It releases. It completes its cycle.

And once it has been heard, you no longer need to carry it anymore.

But when you push feelings down or lock them away, they stay trapped in your body and nervous system. They leak out later through irritation, withdrawal, overthinking, or exhaustion.

They shape your behavior without your permission.

This is why emotional awareness and presence are among the most important life skills we can learn.

Not controlling our emotions. Not eliminating them. But simply being with them.

Learning to sit with sorrow doesn’t mean you give up hope or accept defeat. It means you honour your humanity. It means trusting that emotions are temporary experiences and not permanent identities.

You are not your sadness.

You are not your disappointment.

You are not your grief.

You are the space that holds them.

And when you allow feelings to pass through instead of resisting them, you create something powerful: peace and internal safety.

From that place, clarity returns. Perspective widens. Strength rebuilds.

So the next time sorrow (or infact any negative emotion) arrives, try this.

Pause.

Breathe.

Let it speak.

Ask it - what have you come to tell me.

And when they’ve said what they came to say, let them go. Because that’s how you start to feel good about yourself again.

In the words Elizabeth Lesser.

“Welcome the pain. Something new wants to be born.”

Because sorrow and sadness isn’t an enemy, it’s a doorway. And when we stop resisting it, it becomes part of transformation rather than something we carry forward unresolved.