When Sadness Takes Center Stage
Choose your mood.
I’ve seen this quote everywhere over the past six months.
It is often followed up with some form of positivity coaching, offering tips and tricks for reframing difficult circumstances and transforming pain into purpose. At its core, it’s not a bad way to look at life, I suppose. But for me - and the chronically pain-avoidant people like me - this brand of self-help is just as damaging as offering me a drink. Believing that happiness is mine to make can be just as addictive as the sweet bliss of oblivion to be found at the bottom of a bottle of whiskey (trust me… I’ve tried both.)
And I’ve got to tell you the truth… I’m tired of it.
I’m tired of the mental gymnastics required for me to turn pain into purpose. Sometimes pain is just pain. It will pass, but it’s still pain.
I am starting to suspect that pain - like beauty - can be exquisite because both are part of the whole human experience. However, I have very little proof because I’ve spent so much time trying to feel happy. And I am exhausted by the effort of it all.
Instead, I want to reconcile with the reality that I want to feel.
everything.
Deeply. Completely. In every fiber of my being.
But I literally don’t know how. I never practiced the skill, never took the risk of letting anything bubble to the surface that might allow the mood to choose me, and so I’m stunted in my emotional experience.
And while I won’t ever attempt to teach you something I don’t know myself, I do think we both deserve the freedom that follows real, raw feeling, so to that end, I’ll share a story.
This story is not mine. It does not belong to me. I am not the protagonist, but was instead an observer, a witness to the wonder of what happens when a woman invites sadness to take center stage. And at the end of it , I am hopeful you will feel just as invited as I.
I watched her from a hundred yards away, tucked safely into the tree-line, convinced anyone near me might actually be able to hear the sound of my heart as it beat out of my chest.
She approached the ball perched on the tee in front of her and lined up her stance. I noticed her shoulders, at once both powerful and delicate, moving up and down with her breath at a pace that told me everything I needed to know about what was happening inside of her.
She was afraid. And why wouldn’t she be?
She was surrounded by onlookers who had swarmed the tee box, and from where she stood, it was impossible to determine who was friend and who was foe. All she knew was that everyone was watching, waiting to determine if this unknown senior really did belong in post-season play.
And as her club sliced through the unseasonably-frigid October air, one single line echoed in my chest:
“She is the most courageous person I know.”
I mean, I don’t think I could have done it. Wait, let me rephrase… I FOR SURE couldn’t have done it.
Exhibit A: There was not one single person present to watch me perform, yet there I was, hiding in the literal trees while my child teed off. Maybe it’s just me, but a cowering, fat woman in a puffy white vest who can’t seem to get a deep breath is not exactly the picture of courage.
So, as the first swing landed with the tell-tale whack of a ball that will travel straight and low, I exhaled with relief:
“See, it’s going to be a great day,” I thought. “She’s going to be just fine. My girl has totally got this.”
This was a big day and a big tournament. Likely the last of Alannah’s high school golf career, she was hoping to play well enough to put the finishing touches on a well-played season. Which is exactly what she did.. until her ninth hole.
It was a little par 3, with a small ravine maybe 30 yards off the tee box. What made this hole tricky, though, was not the ditch, but the fact that the green sat on top of a hill that sloped about four feet in all directions. Overshoot the green and the ball would just roll down the other side.
And overshoot, she did. So many times, I actually lost count.
And by the time she got the ball to stay on the green, putting had become impossible because she had been blinded by the mix of mascara and tears filling her eyes This was bad. And getting worse with every passing second.
As I stood on that hill watching my baby girl disintegrate under the weight of her own disappointment, I forced myself to check the primal instinct prompting me to run out on that course, throw her nearly grown ass over my shoulder, and whisk her away to safety where I could heal her with my love and a Starbucks run. I knew there was no way to rescue her from this. The only way out of this was directly through the center of it, and I couldn’t walk through it for her. So, I left her there, fighting against her own fear, certain she would put the ball in the hole as soon as I stopped watching.
As I made my way toward the clubhouse, I moved my attention forward to the next 9 holes in front of her. That was my job, right?
Refocus, reframe, move forward. There was no time for wallowing.
This kid had to get back on that course and the only way to get her there was to show no sign of weakness, no hint of sadness. I would rouse her resilience with my best ‘There’s no crying in golf” speech and she would rally for a peak performance on the back 9.
But when she walked in that door to grab lunch and locked eyes with me, I knew she was having none of my sadness-shrinking bullshit.
Her face. Those eyes. The humiliation I saw there. God, it was just all demanding to be felt…. right now. It was spilling into the space all around her just like it spilled over the ridges of her red-rimmed eyes. It could not be contained even if she had tried. So, she didn’t try.
Instead, she crossed the space separating us, laid her head on my chest and she sobbed.
Like body-racking, ragged-breath kind of weeping.
And in a moment that was both powerful and delicate, surrounded by people who might judge such softness harshly, she became oblivious to their stares and showed me something I have never been able to find in myself.
She showed me what it means to let sadness take center stage.
And it - like her - was the most stunning thing I’d ever seen.
Now, I want to be clear. This story does not come equipped with the predictable “happy ending.”
She did not go back out and kick ass. She did not move it all aside and persevere. She ended her high school career with a season-high score. But her score has nothing at all to do with the way she finished that day.
No, to know how she finished, you would have to know how she kept playing through her tears. You would have to know that she didn’t move her sadness one second before it was done with her. You would have to know how she let it be big and ugly and messy and didn’t give a single fuck about who was watching.
But once you know those things, it’s easy to realize how her score had nothing to do with the way she finished that day.
