Learning to Hold Two Truths

I used to think healing meant choosing. Choosing joy over pain. Choosing faith over  doubt. Choosing strength over struggle. But the longer I’ve lived at the intersection, the  more I’ve realized something different:

Healing isn’t about choosing one truth. It’s about learning how to hold two.

I can be grateful and still be grieving. I can be strong and still feel broken. I can move  forward and still wish things were different. Those things don’t cancel each other out. They  coexist.

There was a moment recently when I remembered a funny story about my husband. We were on our honeymoon going up the ramp of a cruise ship carrying our hang up clothes and a staff person asked us, “What you couldn’t afford luggage?” I don’t even remember what sparked it, but I found myself laughing at the memory. Really laughing. It was the kind of memory that catches you off guard and pulls you fully into the moment.

And right in the middle of it, I felt the ache. I missed my frugal husband. I missed sharing funny memories with him. Not enough to stop laughing. Not enough to take the moment away. But enough to remind me that both things were there, at the same time.

Joy and pain.

For a long time, that felt wrong. Like I was betraying something by allowing both to exist. But now, I’m starting to see it differently. Maybe that’s what it means to heal; not to erase the pain or replace it with something better, but to expand enough to hold it all.

To make room for the full weight of what you’ve been through, without letting it take away your ability to experience what’s still here.

It’s not easy. Some days, the tension feels unbearable. Like you’re being pulled in two directions at once. But other days, there’s a quiet kind of peace in it. A realization that you don’t have to resolve everything to move forward.

You just must be willing to carry both truths, even when they don’t make sense together.