ꜰʀᴏᴍ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʀᴍʜᴏʟᴇ

I came across a quote that said: «There is no light for those who haven't seen the darkness.» At first I thought it was just another way of saying that happiness is only appreciated after hardship. We've all heard that idea before. But the more I sat with it, the more I felt it was pointing somewhere else.. maybe darkness isn't something we're supposed to reject.. Maybe sadness, grief, and vulnerability were never interruptions to life; maybe they have always been part of it. So embrace the journey. Don't reject sadness or grief, and don't put your life on hold because of them. Keep moving forward. Never stop dreaming because one dream was lost. Some losses become part of your story; not to define you, but to teach you. Moments of vulnerability are not failures; they are proof that you are alive, that you have loved, hoped, and cared. And in the end, remember: you are only human. That thought stayed with me longer than I expected. Then another one quietly found its way to me.. "Grief is not the opposite of hope; it's often the price we pay for having hoped in the first place" I had never looked at grief that way before. We usually think of it as proof that we've lost something. But maybe it's proof that, at some point, we had something worth hoping for in the first place. We don't grieve things that meant nothing to us. We don't mourn dreams we never believed in. Maybe grief is really evidence that life once gave us something precious enough to leave a space behind. Then I found myself wondering about something else. People often tell those who grieve to "move on" and I've heard that phrase countless times, and I know it's usually said with good intentions but I wonder if we've misunderstood grief all along. Maybe we're not always the ones holding onto it.. maybe grief is so engraved in us that it's the one holding onto us. I don't know if healing means letting go. I don't know if it means forgetting all about it pretending the loss never happened, or replacing what can never truly be replaced. We could've been asking the wrong thing from healing. I think healing is simply allowing life to continue without asking grief to disappear first. It could be learning to keep walking while carrying the place of those we loved within us. I don't know if that's something anyone achieves overnight and actually I pretty much doubt it.. but perhaps that's exactly why the quote stayed with me. See, darkness was never meant to become our home. It was only meant to become part of the road, even if sometimes it feels like the road ends there. This way the light won't be found because the darkness finally disappeared. But because despite the darkness, we decided to keep walking...