Tuesday thoughts And when sadness Becomes A Signal

Hi Friends,

I recently listened to an interview with the author of Small Things Like These, and it stayed with me long after it ended. She spoke about the real history behind the story, the so-called laundries in Ireland, where young women were sent and often forgotten.

These places, known as Magdalene Laundries, were only shut down as recently as the mid-1980s. Hearing that stopped me for a moment. Not just because of how recent it is, but because of what it represents about how easily lives can become confined, shaped by circumstances that slowly begin to feel permanent.

So here we go, trying to make this into a useful blog.

The quiet truth we don’t talk about enough is this: you cannot experience deep joy without having known sadness. Not surface-level happiness. Not the kind that comes from a good day or a compliment. I mean the kind of joy that feels rooted, earned, almost sacred. The kind that makes you pause and think, I’m really okay. I made it here.That kind of joy has a history. It has walked through disappointment, loss, confusion, and moments where nothing made sense. It has sat in the heaviness long enough to understand contrast.

Because without contrast, everything feels flat. Neutral. Forgettable.Sadness gives depth to our lives. It stretches us. It asks questions we didn’t want to answer. It slows us down when we would rather keep going. And yet, this is where it matters, we are not meant to stay there.

Sadness is part of life. Living in it is a different story. There’s a line that gets crossed, often quietly, where sadness stops being something we move through and becomes something we start identifying with. It becomes familiar. Even comfortable in a strange way. And that’s where we lose ourselves.

Because sadness was never meant to define you. It was meant to inform you. I was reminded of this in Small Things Like These, the book I mentioned above, a quiet but powerful story set in Ireland. It touches on the reality of the Magdalene Laundries, places where young women were sent, often for reasons that today feel unthinkable. Reasons like pregnancies, or having been abused. Basically the abused were sent there and punished, working as slaves to the nuns, taken out of school and out of society entirely. Some stayed there for years. Decades. Hidden in plain sight. Working, living, and aging within walls that offered very little hope of change.

What struck me wasn’t just the sadness of it all. It was how easily a life can become contained by it. How a person can begin to believe that this is simply what life is. That this is all there will ever be. And if we’re honest, while our lives may look very different, that pattern is not so far removed from our own experiences. Not in circumstance, but in mindset. Because we, too, can stay in places, like relationships, identities, emotional states, long after they’ve stopped serving us. We, too, can normalize what quietly diminishes us.

This is where something else begins to stir. For many women, it doesn’t come as gentle motivation. It comes as something stronger. A realization that almost feels like anger, but not the kind that lashes out.It’s steady. Grounded. Clear. The kind that says:

I deserve more than this. I’m not meant to keep living like this. Something needs to change. That feeling is not something to push away. It’s something to respect. Because it’s often the very thing that moves you out of sadness.

Not by denying what you’ve felt, but by honoring it enough to choose differently. Not by denying what you’ve felt, but by honoring it enough to begin changing something in your actual, everyday life. It might look like finally saying what you’ve been holding back in a conversation you’ve avoided for months. It might mean setting a boundary where you’ve always stayed quiet, even if your voice shakes. It could be as simple, and as difficult, as getting up in the morning and deciding that today you will show up differently, even in one small way.

These are not dramatic, life-altering moves all at once, but they are honest ones, and honesty is what begins to shift you out of a place you were never meant to stay in. You don’t need to rush the process. Sadness has its place. It deserves to be felt, not avoided. But you also don’t need to build a life inside it. Joy doesn’t come from avoiding sadness.It comes from moving through it, and deciding, at some point, that you are no longer willing to stay where you are.

Affirmation: I honor my sadness, and I do not stay there. 

PS: Message me for a free consult to start moving toward a more confident you.

You are loved. Deeply loved. Loved beyond measure.

Until next time,

Isabelle

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