The Beauty in Love, Loss, and Longing

Happy Holidays, lovers and friends!  And to all who happen to come across this blog post 😊

Welcome to a safe space.

The Christmastime is arguably my favorite time of the year. (Besides deep autumn or early spring. Can’t beat those.)

Christmas is a time to come together with those we love and celebrate different traditions that we have, to make memories, and to relish in the joy of the coming new year. It’s a time to reflect on the past year and to take account of all of the things in our lives that we are grateful for.

A time to slow down.

It’s a season of giving, of hope, of warmth.

I also understand that, for some, it’s a season of grief, of deep sorrow, and of resentment and frustration. As with any holiday, Christmas can bring up much doubt and shame. We have so much to be grateful for, but we might also notice a heightened awareness for things we don’t have or things we can’t claim as our own. We may notice an emptiness or a hole that wasn’t there the previous year. As our lives change and we grow as humans, we shift and shed our skin. Moments like the Christmas season sometimes remind us of what we’ve lost, but also what is now there in its place.

The days get colder, our homes get warmer, and our families trickle in and out of our spaces. It’s a time marker, to really take stock of how we want to make this next year better. We wonder where we will be next Christmas.

In this most glorious time of year, I wanted to take the time to talk about this sort of longing that most of us have experienced as we go through changes in their lives.

This past spring, I read a book by the stunning Susan Cain titled Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole.

I want to kiss this woman on the mouth, first of all. It’s people like her who write these compelling stories and break these concepts down into beautiful messages that should be our world leaders. The compassion that radiated throughout the reading of this book was remarkable. I highly recommend picking up a copy 😊.

While I was reading the book, the author talked about the concept of longing throughout. How humans are drawn to sorrow.

We are drawn to sad songs, sad movies, sad stories, melancholy moods, and the romanticization of these negative emotions. If you were a fellow Tumblr girl like me, I’m sure you know the vibes lol.

It’s almost like human beings crave these feelings of sadness. There’s a reason why a good cry makes you feel better afterward. There’s a reason why it is so bad for you to keep your pent-up emotions inside. The fact that the body even has a physical reaction to this strong emotion of longing and sorrow, that tears eventually must fall out of your eyeballs. It’s crazy.

Why are we so drawn to the melancholic music and art? Maybe because we identify with the subliminal feelings brought out by these things. Our innate attraction to minor keys and gray skies may be related to the feeling of longing.

This feeling has been unexplainable for my whole life. I know that it is a place in my heart that rests between the now and the “not yet.” It feels like such a hole, a void.

This could be any number of things from wishing for a long term, loving committed relationship, or for a child. It could just be a wish to heal. The longing is the space between where we are now and that which we so deeply desire. And it is definitely a space to be acknowledged. One to be honored, cultivated, and tended to.

Many times, we try to fill this space because it is too big and overwhelming to just sit in. We force ourselves to keep busy in the waiting periods, right?

But what if this space was not simply a void or emptiness, but its own sacred place?

In my humble opinion, I feel as though I’ve never been free of longing. Yes, I try my hardest to be content in the present moment constantly, but I always have a hope for something better in the back of my mind. And that’s okay. Contentment and longing can coexist. In fact, they should!

Merry Christmas :)

The same longing that we have for our deepest needs and wants is just a different manifestation of the love and happiness we’ve experienced before. It’s a state that every human comes into the world with. Because we want to get to the highest point. But without the lows, we can’t ever appreciate or acknowledge the highs.

When we fall in love, everything seems complete in the world. We feel more alive than we’ve ever felt. But, once that love is ripped from us, we can feel almost dead. Like a shell of ourselves.

I know this sounds harsh but it’s almost like we need to remember that we were literally born to die. And, as humans, we spend our whole lives chasing each side of the spectrum that we fail to appreciate all of the emotions in between. We coast through the highs, almost as if we’re ascending into heaven, and we tumble through the lows until we land at the bottom. A place where we feel so low, we sometimes choose to not feel at all anymore.

It’s the yin and the yang, and the longing in between. We couldn’t have one without the other. They define each other. It’s the bittersweet human experience.

It’s why so many religions preach to “long” for the afterlife. That once you get there you will finally find the highest peace and solace. Because our earthly bodies can’t fathom that feeling.

Our mortality, in essence, is an infinite longing. And that’s kinda beautiful.

The idea that being innately human requires us to long for more. To long for the past, to long for a better world.

For it is in this longing that we can acknowledge hope. And without hope, there’s no way forward. Longing is a testament to the fact that we still believe that there IS good and that it will reach us in time.

So, this Christmas season, find beauty in the longing and the hope it brings. Find solace in the innate way we interact with the world and with our own failures and successes. And find contentment in your unique human experience. No one can ever experience it quite like you.

Find beauty in the fact that we are fully human, which means that we have the ability to find joy and contentment within the sorrow and the struggle.

That is absolutely incredible.

I hope you all have a safe, sweet, and wonderful holiday season.

I’m always on your side 😊.

Talk soon,

Hannah <3