Sitting with Sadness

Sadness is one of the vibrations that prove the fact of living.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I spent the day in a conference room, meeting with person after person who, just minutes before had received the news that they were being laid off from their job, that their last day was today, that they were no longer an employee. It was a day of sitting with sadness.

There were tears. There were no tears. There was shock. There was silence. There was disbelief. There was anguish. There was an inability to even begin to process what it all meant. It was a day of sitting with sadness.

After just a couple of those meetings, I realized that I was sitting on sacred ground. I felt privileged and pained at the very same time. I wanted to help and yet was aware that my very presence was an embodiment of the fact that they were just terminated. It was a day of sitting with sadness…even my own.

In the middle of the day a friend sent me an email, touching me deeply with the gift of his words:
I know today is tough stuff…each person has a story…most will be afraid…some will be angry…They will question God, themselves, and their organization. They will call home…break the news…cry. But there will be one…One will see it as a challenge to be accepted…a relief. It’s that person who holds the keys to taking the next step. One will go back to their desk…work and grin while they work like a fiend the next two weeks to leave their place better than they found it…The challenge for you today is to see in the many what few see in themselves. That is why God chose you years ago to go back to that organization today. It isn’t about consulting work…the employee benefit…the “handshake.” It’s about you…you, Ronna, who has been placed there to help others see what the one can see…

He invited me to even more profoundly see the sacred, to sit in sadness, aware of the moment, the space, the people, and the amazing gift of being in the midst of it all. I am deeply grateful.

I must say: I am all-too-familiar with what it has felt like to sit with my own sadness, often and long. Too often, too long, and too alone, at times. And, at the very same time, I recognize how hard it can be to actually let the sadness in. All of us resist it. Somehow, we don’t want to give in to all that we feel. We fear we will come undone, that all hell will break loose, that our worlds will fall apart. I get it.

Admittedly, to feel sadness is hard, but it is also a sign of life. I have known that life for myself. I saw it all around me today. When we sit with sadness we can’t help but feel our hearts – sometimes for the first time in a long time. We ache – and we feel. We care – and we feel. We are reminded that we have deep emotions…albeit ones we wish we could push down or away. Nonetheless, those very feelings remind us that we are, indeed, alive. To reference de Saint-Exupery above: Sadness is one of the vibrations that prove the fact of living.

Sitting in sadness. Today, such an honor and privilege. Amazing individuals who proved themselves alive. Who invited me to the same. It was beautiful.

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