"Sadness is always present in our joy because joy, like all emotions and experiences, is impermanent and we will have to let it go eventually. And joy is always present in our sadness because we can't be sad about something that we don't hold dear and greatly appreciate."
— a wise Buddhist friend
Learning to Drive a 24-Foot Airstream Alone
On June 30, I backed my newly acquired 2013 Airstream Mercedes 3500 van named Shirley (In memory of my sweet mama) out of our Texas driveway and pointed her north. Twenty-four feet of gleaming silver ambition, and me and my shaky confidence having never driven anything longer than a Suburban. My hands gripped the wheel at ten and two like a sixteen-year-old at her driving test.
Here is what nobody tells you about learning to drive a big rig: the mirrors become your prayer life. You check them constantly, devotedly, the way I once checked fetal heart tracings. You learn the wide turn, the slow merge, the humility of being passed by everyone on the interstate. Somewhere outside Amarillo, I stopped apologizing to the van for my clumsiness and started talking to her like a friend. We were going to figure this out together. Start again, I told myself at every gas station where I misjudged the pump lane. Start again.
What the Road From Texas to Montana Taught Me
West Texas gave me emptiness, the good kind. Horizon in every direction, open and flat land so big it makes your worries feel appropriately small. Colorado gave me mountains and the terror of grades, learning to gear down, learning to trust the engine brake, learning that fear and exhilaration live in the same breath. Wyoming gave me wind, relentless and honest, pushing against the broad silver side of the van like a hand testing my resolve. And then Montana. There is a phenomenon of the sky getting bigger and bluer the closer you get (it's not just me, it's a real thing) Oh, Montana. The state where three of my four children live, where my grandchildren live, where my heart has always kept a second home. Crossing that border, I cried a little. Joy does that. It leaks.
I have been on the road ever since, and the road has been teaching me.
Impermanence at Dawn in Yellowstone
In Yellowstone Park, I stood at the edge of a meadow at dawn while steam rose off the river like the earth exhaling in the cold. A bison bull crossed in front of me, unhurried, ancient, utterly uninterested in my itinerary (thank God). I felt the kind of joy that has no words, only breath. And right there, braided into it, sadness and grief. Because I knew I couldn't hold the moment. The steam would burn off. The bison would amble on. I would get back in the van. My Buddhist friend is right. Joy is impermanent, and some part of us knows it even while we're standing in it. I have learned, that knowing is not a flaw in the joy. It is the joy, ripened.
When a New Life and a Fading One Arrive in the Same Week
Then came the texts and phone calls, the way they do, one after another, as if life wanted to make sure I understood the lesson.
My step-great-granddaughter was born. A brand new person, tiny and furious and perfect, arriving into a family that already loves her beyond reason. I have caught thousands of babies in my career. I know the mechanics of birth well. And still, every single time, the miracle undoes me. A great-grandbaby. When did I get old enough for that? When did I get lucky enough?
And in the same season, my father, ninety years old, became very sick. Possibly dying, they said. Possibly. What a word to carry down the highway. I drove with it sitting in the passenger seat, and I did what women who do too much have always done. I kept moving. I made calls. I did the math of miles and days. And somewhere in the Wyoming part of Yellowstone, with the wind shoving the van sideways, I finally let myself feel it all at once: the baby and my father, the arriving and the leaving, both held in the same hands.
Can you be heartbroken and grateful in the same breath? I am learning that you can. That you must. My sadness about my father is enormous precisely because he is enormous to me. I've had sixty-five years of him. His voice, his stubbornness, his hands. I cannot be sad about something I don't hold dear. My sadness is the receipt for my love. And my joy about this new baby girl carries its own tender shadow, because I know now, in my bones, how fast it all goes. She was born into impermanence, like all of us. That doesn't diminish the celebration. It sanctifies it.
Widening the Vehicle: What Emotional Health Actually Means
The road makes room for both. That is what I've discovered in this silver van, somewhere between the Texas caprock and the Absaroka Range. Grief and gratitude are not opposites taking turns. They are travel companions, riding together, trading the wheel.
I used to think emotional health meant sorting my feelings into tidy compartments, joy here, sorrow there, everything labeled. Now I think it means widening the vehicle. Making the interior big enough to carry it all: the newborn and the ninety-year-old, the bison at dawn and the hospital room I may soon sit in, the exhilaration of the open road and the ache of everything I'm driving toward and away from.
Today, I'll let joy and sadness ride together. I'll check my mirrors. I'll take the wide turn. I'll hold my father and my great-granddaughter in the same prayer, and I will not ask my heart to choose.
Start again. Keep driving. Love it all.
With much love,
Robyn,
iLumn8 Women Guide and Physician's Coach
F. A .Q .
Yes — many people experience joy and grief together rather than one after the other, especially around major life transitions like births, illness, or loss. Psychologists sometimes call this an "ambivalent" or "bittersweet" emotion, and it's a normal, healthy response rather than a sign something is wrong.
Joy is tied to things we deeply value, and anything we value we eventually have to let go of in some form. That built-in impermanence means joyful moments can carry an undercurrent of sadness simply because we know, on some level, they won't last forever.
It usually means the thing you're grieving mattered enormously to you. Sadness can function as a kind of receipt for love — the size of the grief reflects the size of what was cherished.
Rather than trying to sort feelings into separate compartments, it can help to consciously make room for both — journaling, talking them through, or simply naming out loud that you're feeling joy and grief in the same breath. Giving both emotions space, rather than picking one, tends to feel more honest and sustainable.
Yes. Tears aren't only about sadness — they often show up whenever emotion is intense, positive or difficult. Crying during a joyful moment in a hard season is a common and healthy release, not a contradiction.
Nurture Your Feminine Side
There is a Goddess in EVERYwoman EVERYday but she can be hard to find and even harder to maintain in such trying times!
With your membership comes a weekly dose of "how to's" ... tools and tips take care of your physical, mental, emotional health. This combined with regular LIVE sessions to commune, grow and learn with a sisterhood.
Join this community of women committed to empowering each other, elevating the value of the feminine and diversity in our culture, while building a network of inspiring and powerful sisters of many backgrounds.