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Why Imagination—Not Resilience—Might Help You Heal From Heartbreak
One of the words most bandied about during challenges, even before these upside-down pandemic times, is resilience. We hear a lot about our collective need for strength, or our individual cultivation of effort in the face of adversity.

Notable books have connoted resilience with Grit, or climbing The Second Mountain, or Bouncing Back. The Oxford English Dictionary defines resilience as “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.” Alternatively, Merriam Webster likens resilience to a form of rubbery elasticity, or the ability “to adjust easily to misfortune.” The takeaway being that to survive crisis, we must quickly and easily adopt the quality of sand that gets in your teeth—or, like rubber, we must reflect a type of unchanging, indestructible goo.

Even social scientists, who take a nuanced view of resilience as “a stable trajectory of healthy functioning after a highly adverse event,” require levels of stability and health that are difficult to maintain for even the most seasoned mindfulness practitioners.

Who we were before cannot be resurrected; grief and trauma aren’t about stretching and then regaining our original shape, they are about being reformed into what some grief experts call the dynamic shift from Life One to Life Two.

Cultivating resilience during times of adversity is exhausting. Many people feel weak when faced with a crisis and it is dissonant to suggest they be physically or mentally tough. As an end of life doula, I regularly see this response. A hospice patient, a woman of deep spiritual grounding, with years of contemplative practice, recently said to me, “I’m not tough. I am scared. I am tired. I am so ordinary.” To suggest that she develop resilience feels out of sync with her reality. In my experience, if a concept doesn’t provide comfort in death, it is ill formed to support us in life. This means resilience, despite its popularity and positive intent, does not necessarily encourage effective coping.

“Bouncing Back” from Grief

Another challenge with resilience is the implication of elasticity. As anyone who has faced profound loss or suffering can attest, a person cannot take the same shape afterward as they had before. “Bouncing back” suggests that it is possible to go back to a prior pre-crisis life, that the past is inherently more desirable than the present.

It may feel true in a time of suffering that yesterday was better than today, but functionally there is only this moment. Looking constantly backward leads to the belief that an imaginary past self is required to survive a crisis. This is false. Who we were before cannot be resurrected; grief and trauma aren’t about stretching and then regaining our original shape. They are about being reformed into what some grief experts call the dynamic shift from Life One to Life Two.

How Imagination Helps

What then should we make of this obsession with resilience as a way to survive through suffering? What if instead of resilience, there was an alternative, one that allowed for the mysterious potentiality of an unwritten future?

What if we met hardship not with resilience but with imagination? Imagination is about curiosity, openness, and adaptability. It encourages us to perceive the darkest moments of struggle as neither fixed, nor inflexible, but subject to change. Imagination is about expansive potential.

The familiar phrase “not in my wildest imagination” conjures up worst-case scenarios and magical thinking, but that is not the only type of imagination you can call on. Alternatively, there is the pragmatic imagination required to address adversity. Researchers from the University of Colorado and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai studied people’s brains after asking them to imagine ways to adapt to various types of threats. They concluded that imagination “reduces neural and physiological conditioned threat responses,” particularly by stimulating the pre-frontal cortex, the part of our brain that oversees decision making, logic, and executive function.

One example of this is extinction theory, an imagination practice in behavioral psychology where a person reimagines an event from the past to neutralize its negative effects. But imagination is not just for working with past trauma. Instead it is a form of cognitive flexibility that we can practice both in non-crisis situations as well as in the middle of life’s most challenging moments.

Start With What Matters Most

How do we ignite the power of imagination in times of suffering? First, we must start by understanding our priorities. Begin by asking: What matters most to me right now? What must I hold on to or protect? From there, it is a matter of operationalizing our priorities into manageable, reasonable next steps. What is possible in this moment? Possible is different than desirable; it is not tied to outcomes but to one’s inner ability to choose. What choices do I have right now? How do my choices tie to what matters most? Sounds simple, but from the depths of suffering even the smallest choices feel monumental.

I remember after the sudden death of my sister when I was in my 20s, lying in bed paralyzed by grief. Deep within I prioritized finding meaning and making it through the experience intact, but more broadly I couldn’t imagine where my life would go, how I could live without my best friend.

During even the darkest times there are surprising glimmers of light that one can use to ignite imagination and ease the overwhelming grief. The momentary glimmers are proof points for imagination, reminders that there is something other than the pain.

So, I started imagining small things; putting on my shoes, going to class, taking a walk by the lake. Gradually, I pictured more expansive parts of my life—getting an internship, applying for a job, finding ways to give back. These things helped me focus and I held on to them. It wasn’t a heroically resilient process. I had very little rubbery strength. It was tiny moments of imagination that slowly helped me fill in the shape of Life Two.

Ignite Your Imagination

While we can’t imagine suffering away, we can imagine space within suffering for other occurrences—laughter, connection, compassion. Many recently bereaved families describe unexpectedly meaningful conversations with perfect strangers, or feelings of gratitude at an outpouring of support from a friend, or momentary peace when a ray of sunshine hit their face. During even the darkest times there are surprising glimmers of light that one can use to ignite imagination and ease the overwhelming grief. The momentary glimmers are proof points for imagination, reminders that there is something other than the pain.

One of the most powerful ways we utilize imagination is through choice. Pain can create a tunnel vision that limits our ability to see a wider picture. Imagining there are choices can help us cope. Imagining choices is different than positive thinking. Positivity assumes outcomes, it often relies on a belief that “things will all work out.” But there is no guarantee of a positive outcome in every situation—as bereaved people well know.

Imagination suggests that even in hopeless situations we have a choice to show kindness, to accept help, to experience more than just one way of being. For example, dying people commonly feel pain and fear; asking them to imagine something meaningful offers the possibility to feel something alongside the pain, even if only for a moment. Imagination applies equally to end of life as to everyday life.

People try to survive trauma and suffering with strength, grit, or resilience all the time—by hardening. But the point of a mindfulness practice is not merely hardened survival. There is space between the suffering where mystery lives, where we can soften and be curious, where the uncertainty isn’t one of dread, but of wide vistas and joyous laughter. If we cannot accept suffering, we cannot free ourselves from the fear of it, and we cannot find the spacious repose without imagination. That’s the mystery.

A Mindfulness Practice to Help Face Crisis and Trauma

Try this imagination exercise as a structured process for facing crisis and trauma.
1. Using a breath or a mantra, acknowledge “Who I was before this time of suffering cannot be resurrected.”
1. Choose an aspirational word, something you would like to experience in the midst of this hardship—peace, growth, connection, surprise, reconciliation.
1. Using your aspirational word as an anchor, imagine what it would feel like, for example to be at peace. Do not look far into the future but consider where you might choose peace in this moment.
1. Sometimes in acute crisis imagination feels impossible. But it is a pragmatic skill that develops with practice. The simple act of imagining moves us from the bleak stuckness of suffering into the unwritten potential of the future.
How to Mend a Broken Heart

When love falls apart, embracing your life as it is—agony, misfortune, and all—can help you heal. Try this three-step mindfulness practice to help you find stability and a little bit of ease. Read More

Elaine Smookler

July 16, 2020
About The Author

Meredith Parfet

Meredith Parfet is the founder and CEO of Ravenyard Group, a crisis management consultancy focused on the wellbeing of leaders and teams. She received an MBA from Northwestern University, a Masters in Spiritual Care from the Iliff School of Theology, is an End of Life Doula and a hospice chaplain. www.ravenyard.com
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August 4, 2026
Resting in the Flow With A Guided Meditation
Stress reduction, helping with depression, coping with illness and adversity, improved relational skills, and an ability to make better, less bias-prone decisions—all of these benefits can flow from mindfulness training. But they might all be seen like by-products of travelling along a path to deeper awakening, which flows from the recognition that nothing in life, including ourselves, is stuck in the way we habitually think.

In mindfulness practice, we train in letting go of our stories about stress and pain, learn that thoughts are not facts, and watch sensations change from moment to moment. We notice that experience is ﬂuid, and can be perceived without taking it so personally. We learn that pain, stress, thoughts and everything else that occurs in the mind and body are not “me.”

Why “Me” Always Changes

So what kind of “me” is there? When we ask ourselves this question, most of us will come up with a list of identities—perhaps a name, a profession, a family role, a nationality. Already there are problems with this—as Jon Kabat-Zinn puts it, your name is “just a sound that your parents gave to you when you were born.” It may be applied consistently, for convenience, throughout a lifetime, but what it refers to certainly shifts over the years. I am not the same “me” who had my name as a baby.

The composition of our bodies is in continual flux. Over the last few weeks, your epidermis (the layer of skin that covers your body) has completely regenerated. Cells in the stomach are replaced after about five days, while our livers regenerate every year. Our entire skeleton is replaced every ten years. The brain changes all the time, too. Over the last fifteen years, researchers have learned that neural shifts occur as a consequence of events in the mind, body, and life. An experienced taxi driver will develop an unusually large hippocampus (a part of the brain associated with learning, memory, and spatial processing), while a skilled musician’s fine motor cortex will reﬂect their years of practice. Even learning to juggle over the course of a week produces observable neural changes in the brain. Many people believe that the core of their “self” resides in the brain, but if we never have the same brain from one moment to the next, how could there be such a core?

What Makes Up “Me”?

The evidence from neuroscience research suggests that what feels like “me” is in fact an infinite number of changing aspects of mind, brain and body, working in harmony to produce a sense of coherence and agency from the events of life. The experience of being “me” is a projection—a bit like when a film appears on a screen from the projection of different colours. This projected “me” assumes responsibility for actions that actually occur as a ﬂuid interchange of indefinable aspects of mind,
body, brain, and environment.

There are heavy costs to this assumption. You don’t have to get depressed to witness how close identification with thoughts, emotions, and sensations creates suffering. Every time we turn a thought into a fact in our minds by calling it “mine,” we become blinded to the reality that it is influenced (and often biased) by myriad causes and conditions in our past and present. When we identify with a thought, it becomes difficult to see its biases, and we become trapped in a virtual version of life, doomed to self-righteousness, paranoia, negativity, or other patterns of distorted thinking. Similarly, when we identify with an emotion, we become prisoners of our moods. And when we get caught up with our bodies, we feel at their mercy, struggling with a journey through life that inevitably proceeds towards infirmity and breakdown.

Why Losing Control Can Make You Happier

Relief is attainable by shifting perception and letting go of the falsehood that we are in complete control. By recognizing the conditioning that deeply affects our lives, we can start to give ourselves—and others—a break. At the same time, realizing we are multi-faceted beings that change from moment to moment, in ﬂow with an ever-shifting biological, psychological, social, and environmental context, we can start to practice riding with the changes. We can hold our beliefs and opinions lightly, rather than construct blindingly fixed identities from them.

As soon as we are aware of thoughts and sensations arising in experience, rather than getting caught in attempts to grasp or reject them, a glimmer of space emerges between the events of our lives and our reactions to them.

As soon as we are aware of thoughts and sensations arising in experience, rather than getting caught in attempts to grasp or reject them, a glimmer of space emerges between the events of our lives and our reactions to them. In this space, reactions can become responses, and tension and resistance can fall away, along with the stress they generate. Life becomes a dance with the world, rather than a war against it; a ﬂow, rather than a struggle. By dropping our tight identification with what comes up in our minds, bodies and lives, we can start to feel better. As a famous meditation teacher once put it: “If you let go a little, you will get a little happiness. If you let go a lot, you will get a lot of happiness. And if you let go completely, you will be completely happy.”

You can watch a video of me speaking for Action For Happiness about this and other mindfulness-related themes here. And below is a practice you can try to train in resting in the changing flow of moment-to-moment experience.

Resting in the Flow of Experience

Being human is like flowing as a river—many moving droplets make up the stream. The river changes all the time, yet there is continuity as it follows well-worn grooves through the landscape. A river cannot suddenly shift its direction, just as we humans tend to follow a course set by past events and patterns. Yet, the more we become aware of how the ﬂow occurs and the grooves are followed, the more we can relax into the ride. As we see more clearly, we also become more able to steer our way skilfully through the current. A good way to begin is to practice resting in the ﬂow, as in this meditation.

Read and practice the guided meditation script below, pausing after each paragraph. Or listen to the audio practice.
1. Settle into a posture for sitting meditation, feeling the connection of your body to the ﬂoor, cushion, or seat. At any time during this practice, especially if you feel disconnected or disembodied, come back to this sense of groundedness, anchoring your experience.
2. Begin paying attention to breathing, noticing how each breath—indeed, each moment of each breath—is a unique experience, not the same as the previous one or the next. Notice how the breath happens without you controlling it—your breath is happening within you; “you” are not choosing to breathe. Know, too, that all of the automatic processes of the body—oxygenation of the cells, blood ﬂow, heartbeat, and so on—are happening in the same way. As best you can, relax into this experience.
3. Open awareness now to the whole body. As sensations rise into consciousness and pass through, recognize that they are all impermanent, continually transforming in intensity, location, and quality. Let them be experienced, moment by moment, and allow them to pass through, as best you can, without attachment or rejection. Recognize too that the physical constituents of your body are in ﬂux—skin is being shed, cells are growing and dying, some neural connections are strengthening, others are weakening.
4. Now bring awareness to thoughts. With a friendly interest, observe the patterns of thinking that are running through the mind, like clouds passing across the sky of the mind, making up its weather. Like the weather, these patterns are always changing, depending on atmospheric conditions. Realize that the thoughts you had a year ago, five years ago, a decade ago—each of which may have seemed extremely important back then—are now merely memories, and that thoughts appearing in the mind right now will share that fate.
5. Finally, open up your mindfulness to every aspect of conscious experience—sensations, sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and thoughts. Let go into the space within and around you, remaining alert and present to whatever comes. Allow the play of experience to happen by itself, resting in the ﬂow, moment by moment. When you notice attention wandering to a particular place, acknowledge the wandering and open out to the whole panorama of experience once more.
This post was adapted from Into The Heart of Mindfulness, by Ed Halliwell, published by Piatkus. Download a set of 14 guided audio meditation practices from Ed’s books here.
An Election Day Meditation

Follow along as Rhonda Magee guides us through a S.T.O.P. practice for focused awareness. The invitation is to be kind to yourself, take a conscious breath, and gently relate to thoughts, emotions, and sensations that arise. Read More

Rhonda Magee

November 5, 2024
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July 29, 2026
Focus Your Busy Mind With A Grounding Practice
We’re going to be exploring today a series of different ways to cultivate mindful attention. It’s a particularly helpful practice when the mind is busy, when we’re finding it hard to be present, when we’re triggered by something, or when it’s just really hard to settle. Of course, this might sound like any day of the week. But there are times in particular when we’re so busy thinking, planning, worrying, stressing that it’s really hard to focus on the breath or the body, or whatever particular meditation object we’re using.

Attending to Attention

This practice is a really useful technique or tool that supports the attention that is grounded in our physical sensory experience. So I’m going to instruct you to move your attention from being aware of seeing, to hearing, to sensing your body.

And when I say, “be mindful of seeing,” that means I’m going to invite you to lower your gaze, like I’m doing right now, and sit with a soft, focused attention: relaxed eyes, soft gaze, and just being aware of the visual stimuli—color, light, form, shape. You’re not looking at any particular thing or observing or studying anything closely, just being aware of receiving the visual field in the same way we listen—which will be the next thing we shift our attention to. We will go from seeing to hearing.

And with hearing, again, you’re just opening up your attention and allowing the full auditory landscape to be known—hearing the ambient sounds, the distant sounds, the nearer sounds, the sound of my voice. This also includes sounds in the room where you are, or the sounds of nature, mechanical sounds—the general panorama of sounds.

So, we’ll do that for a few moments, and then we’ll shift our attention to sensing our physical experience. That is, sensing our posture, and in particular, feeling the contact of the body with the ground or whatever you’re sitting on. The focus will be on feeling your sitz bones, your legs, your feet. We’ll also steer toward some awareness of our breath. Then, we’ll rotate through those three primary experiences: seeing, hearing and sensing. And we’ll do this rotation several times as a way to really ground the attention.

Another benefit: each time we move the attention in this manner, it lights up our curiosity. And when we’re curious, it allows our attention to engage, allows us to abide more strongly in the present.

A Grounding Practice to Focus Your Busy Mind

Watch the video:

Listen to the Audio:

Read and practice the guided meditation script below, pausing after each paragraph. Or listen to the audio practice.
1. Begin by finding a comfortable posture where you can sit upright and relaxed. Just take a moment to sense your physical experience. Ideally, your eyes are closed, or, if not, the gaze is lowered a little. Sense your body settling. Feel the contact of your body with the ground or the chair. Be aware of your posture, aware of the movement of breath and the sensations. In the body.
2. Now, from this experience of sensing the body, I invite you to open your eyes and just gaze in front of you. Lower the gaze maybe a few feet—aim for relaxed, soft eyes, a soft gaze. And just be mindful that you’re seeing, receiving through the eyes color, light, form, shape, movement.
3. Now, closing your eyes, lowering your gaze more, and shifting your attention to hearing. Be aware of sound. Be aware of silence. Be aware of the whole variety of the soundscape.
4. And then shifting awareness to sensing your body again. Sensing your posture, contact, touching, breathing. And open the eyes: now we’re seeing. Aim for a soft gaze. Think of saving through the eyes. There’s no need to make any particular effort. This is just simple mindfulness of seeing.
5. Closing the eyes now and be aware of hearing. No need to think about the sounds or the source of the sounds, just resting in the simple experience of hearing, of listening.
6. And now shifting attention to sensing the body again. Be curious about whatever it is you notice: temperature, breath, the experience of contact and touching, other physical sensations.
7. And moving to awareness of seeing again, so, opening the eyes. Move the eyes down a little, have a soft gaze. Be aware of the experience of knowing that you’re sitting here: sitting, seeing, hearing. There may be all kinds of noise going on in your mind—thoughts, planning, worrying—and yet this attunement to seeing and hearing and sensing allows you to stay grounded here.
8. Now we’re going to move our attention a little more quickly among these three spheres of our experience. So, let’s close the eyes, shifting awareness to hearing and sensing the sensations of your body. And now to seeing: opening the eyes. Now, again to hearing. Sensing your body. And lastly, opening the eyes and seeing.
9. As we bring the meditation to a close, be aware of all three of these areas of experience: seeing, and hearing, and sensing. Notice how this practice allows you to stay grounded and present.
No matter what might be going on in your life, whether it’s a busy mind, challenges in your body, or whatever else is pulling you away from the present moment, we can use this simple practice. Seeing, hearing, sensing: it’s a way to stay grounded, present, open. And it’s a way to support yourself in staying really grounded in your immediate experience.

You can practice this anywhere: in your office, at home, in a park. Pay particular attention to the contrast between doing this practice indoors versus having the support of the sensory experience outside. See if that makes a difference. And remember you can draw on this practice at any time—particularly when it feels hard to get present or concentrate or focus.

About The Author
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July 27, 2026
Play, SoulPancake, and Building Your Anti-Depressant Brain

When it comes to happiness, says Elisha Goldstein, there’s a simple but important tool we often forget about: play.

For years now, I’ve been studying what helps create more resilience and happiness within us. I’ve looked at my own life, the life of my clients and students, and the psychological and neuroscience research. What I’ve found is that within each and every one of us are a core set of natural anti-depressants. When we intentionally tap into these resources, it shifts our brain activity in ways that can lend itself to shaping an anti-depressant brain. One of the natural anti-depressants that I’ve come to find that helps break a bad mood and create positive neural activity is Play!

In Uncovering Happiness: Overcoming Depression with Mindfulness and Self-Compassion I describe play as “a flexible state of mind in which you are presently engaged in some freely chosen and potentially purposeless activity that you find interesting, enjoyable, and satisfying.”

Here’s a great video that shows adults playing and the results. Take a look and see what you notice.

When adults were put in an enriched environment where the cues elicited play, they became more engaged, open, and most seemed to be genuinely enjoying themselves.

Research from Marion Diamond out of UC Berkeley shows that rats who had a more enriched environment with toys and playmates showed growth in their cerebral cortex. This is the part of the brain that’s involved with cognitive processing and those rats actually ran mazes quicker than others who had less enriched environments. This type of research has been repeated over and over again with similar results. (Note: Rats that had a depleting environment absent of toys and playmates showed a reduction in the thickness of their cerebral cortex).

The reality is engaging play reduces stress, promotes creativity, productivity, openness, and revitalizes our sense of aliveness. It is literally a natural anti-depressant.

The question for us is how can we create more enriching environments?

One answer lies in understanding how our brain responds to cues. Most of the time our brain is automatically making decisions beneath our consciousness and the cues in our environments are influencing those decisions. If we’re often alone and there’s a lack or nourishing things and people in our environment it’s more likely to lead to depression and anxiety. On the other hand, if our environments are more engaging and we have access to more playmates it creates more resiliency. So we have to consider: Do the environments we currently live in, at home and at work, elicit cues of play?

If so, it’s a good practice to be conscious of those cues. If not, how can you create more cues in your environment that elicit a more playful neural response?

Encourage play at home and at work

Many companies are starting to create more enriching environments because the research is clear that it leads to happier, less stressed, more loyal and productive employees. If your workplace doesn’t you can take it into your own hands, create a joke board, or take mini-breaks where you intentionally watch a short video like the one above or hang out with nourishing people as a source of connection.

At home you can consider what play means to you? This is usually something that you have been thinking of doing that your mind said was unimportant. Maybe you want to pick up the camera more, reconnect with old friends, read a pleasurable book, or take a 2-hour date with yourself weekly and do something out of your routine that feeds you. That’s how I got started.

In our culture we see this as a luxury because we prize working over playing and our minds often say that “playing is unproductive.” This is one the biggest lies our brain tells us. The research is clear, those that integrate play into their lives are more likely to run the mazes faster and more efficiently.

There are other tricks to uncovering a more playful life and even to finding playmates, but the first step is looking to your cues and starting to create more enriching playful environments. Then we need to actively create this for ourselves even in the face of the voices in our heads that say “I don’t deserve it” or “There are more important things to do.” In Uncovering Happiness, I call these “Negative Unconscious Thoughts” or NUTs as we often feel nuts when they’re around.

The message here is:

Being mindful of play and engaging it in your life can act as a natural anti-depressant, creating positive neural shifts that when practiced and repeated can contribute to an anti-depressant brain.

Take a moment and share, what does play mean to you? How do you bring it into your life? Your interaction creates a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.

Adapted from Mindfulness & Psychotherapy

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July 13, 2026
A 12 Minute Meditation to Unhook from Negativity and Savor Joy

Perhaps it seems strange to be investigating what we consider to be a positive emotion, but I think we often miss joy. We don’t actually pay a lot of attention to it; we can often let it slip by without much notice. The good news is, there are practices to cultivate it. And these practices can help us attend to and support joy in our felt experience. It’s actually a pretty important emotion.

Joy aids us in waking up to our lives. And it’s a factor in supporting concentration. So if you’re someone who feels distracted much of the time, have difficulty focusing or paying attention, cultivating and attending to joy is a great way to deepen your concentration.

First, let’s explore what joy is. For me, it can be pleasurable to experience, but it’s essentially different from pleasure. I experience joy as a really internal occurrence. It can be sparked by something external, but it’s also something I can very much cultivate internally. One of the great ways to do that is to consider the things in my life that I’m grateful for. Another way is to savor—really stop and savor—what’s beautiful and good and working in my life.

This is a profoundly important ability because as humans we operate with a negativity bias. In and of itself, that bias makes a lot of sense: we tend to focus our minds on what is wrong or threatening or what could harm us so that we might be better protected through the vagaries of life. But if we allow that negativity bias to run rampant, we risk missing out on what’s beautiful and joyful and nourishing in our lives. Not to mention, we grow less and less equipped to actually cultivate such beauty and joy and nourishment ourselves. So training ourselves to receive and enjoy what’s good is no frivolous pursuit. Learning to savor joyful moments helps us unhook from negativity and open to new possibility.

So let’s practice. And again, as we’ve done with all of our practices with emotions, we’ll mostly attend to the physical sensations of joy. And maybe we’ll see it grow as we pay attention to it. While we’re at it, we’ll also try to notice how focusing on joy can help strengthen our concentration. The great thing is, if you give the mind something pleasant and joyful to pay attention to, it will want to go there. Maybe you’ll decide to begin each mindfulness practice with joy cultivation. (Talk about a great motivator for sitting down for a few minutes). You may also want to employ this approach in your everyday life.

A 12 Minute Meditation to Unhook from Negativity and Savor Joy

Watch the video:

Listen to the practice:

Read and practice the guided meditation script below, pausing after each paragraph. Or listen to the audio practice.

1. Let’s take our seat wherever we happen to be. As always, you’re welcome to lie down if you’re in a place where you can do that. Let’s take a few deeper breaths. Just settle in here: lengthen your inhale and your exhale. During these opening breaths, simply scan your mind and body and notice how you’re feeling. Let’s use the breath to bring some balance in this moment. If you’re feeling tired or drowsy, just take in a little bit more air, emphasize the inhale. If you’re feeling agitated or restless, emphasize the exhale—really extend it. And then allow your breath to come to its natural rhythm. Feel your contact with the chair, your feet on the ground. Find that support and contact with the earth.

2. Now let’s bring to mind some recent joyful moments from our lives. Alternatively, you could reflect on some of the things you’re grateful for in your life. What’s working these days? You’re alive, so something must be working … Maybe it’s simply that you found this 30-day challenge and you’ve done some practices—you’ve found the time to take care of yourself in this way. Or maybe you’ve been seeing some benefits in your life. Perhaps there’s a relationship you’re enjoying; you’re feeling loved and connected. This could be with a person, or it could be that you have a puppy or a cat in your life. Or maybe you’ve been to a place that’s stirred joy in you: some place in nature, perhaps near a lake, surrounded by trees, a spot where you could gaze upon a vista you love. Choose one or a few moments to focus on and really get the joy going. What brings you joy? Maybe it’s recalling movement such as dancing or swimming or another physical activity that stirs joy for you. Perhaps it’s travel, a recent trip. Or maybe it’s learning something new.

3. Really reflect on receiving the joy of these experiences. Bring your attention into your body. Notice how you experience joy in this moment. Where do you feel it in your body? The chest, the belly, the throat, the face? What do you notice? Is there a temperature to the joy? Is there a flow or movement to the energy of joy in your body? How big is it? As you pay attention to it, can you kind of relax your attention into the joy? Breathe into it. And if there’s a sense that this energy of joy wants to grow, let it. Maybe it expands to other parts of your body—all the way out to your fingertips and your toes. Just notice: is it tingling, vibrating, flowing?

4. If at any point you lose that felt sense of connection, just recall again the images, people, situations that bring you joy. Then return to feeling into and savouring and maybe even expanding that felt sense and felt energy of joy in your body. Breathe into it.

5. As we close out this short practice, let’s take a moment to reflect on and notice the people, places, situations that bring us joy. What were the things that really inspired a felt, energetic sense of joy for you? Maybe they surprised you. Maybe they’re things that you don’t do that often. But you could. You could bring more of that into your life. So, how could you do that?

6. Before we finish, let’s make a simple commitment to do one of those things that brings us joy. Let’s commit to bringing in more of that joy-inducing activity or more of that connection or more time with the people in our lives that bring us joy.

7. When you’re ready, open your eyes if they were closed. Take a deep breath. Are you orienting yourself to the space around you? Notice how you feel right now.

As you go back into your day, I invite you to pay more attention to what’s joyful in your life. Then, commit to drawing more of that in, and to cultivating it further.

About The Author

Jessica Morey

Jessica Morey is a meditation teacher and coach. She has been practicing meditation for almost 3 decades. She is also the co-founder and former executive director of Inward Bound Mindfulness Education, a nonprofit organization bringing in-depth mindfulness and compassion training to youth.

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July 9, 2026
Free Meditation Apps Worthy of Your Attention
There’s no shortage of mindfulness and meditation apps these days, promising to help you combat anxiety, sleep better, hone your focus, and more. In fact, the Wall Street Journal reports that more than 2,000 new meditation apps launched between 2015 and 2018, and offerings have only increased as a result of higher demand during the pandemic—according to the New York Times, mindfulness apps surged in 2020. We took the overwhelm out of finding the most valuable and easy-to-use meditation apps that are available free and narrowed it down to these five apps.

Summary

Mindfulness.com
- Platforms: iOS, Android, web
- Highlights: Over 2,000 guided meditations with a customizable “For You” experience, quick mini exercises,sleep aids, and calming soundscapes.
- Paid Upgrade: Offers Mindfulness Plus+ for enhanced features like daily coaching.
Insight Timer
- Platforms: iOS, Android, web
- Highlights: Massive library of 80,000+ free meditations from 10,000+ teachers, live events, and a global community showing real-time meditation stats.
- Paid Upgrade: Annual subscription unlocks courses, offline downloads, and advanced player controls.
Smiling Mind
- Platforms: iOS, Android, web
- Highlights: Not-for-profit with structured programs for different age groups and needs, including quick sessions and family-friendly content.
- Cost: Entirely free with no premium options.
UCLA Mindful
- Platforms: iOS, Android
- Highlights: Developed by UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center, featuring bilingual guided meditations and research-based practices, plus longer “podcast” sessions.
- Cost: Free.
Healthy Minds Program
- Platforms: iOS, Android
- Highlights: Merges neuroscience with meditation training using a four-pillar approach (Awareness, Connection, Insight, Purpose) and offers micro practices for on-the-go mindfulness.
- Cost: Free.
5 Free Meditation Apps We’re Happy We Downloaded

1) Mindfulness.com

Available for iOS, Android, and web

Entry price: Free

With over 2,000 guided meditations from world-leading teachers, this app caters to both beginners and seasoned practitioners.

The interface includes five tabs: Mini, where you can find quick and easy mindfulness exercises you can do anytime throughout the day; Meditate, where you’ll find all of the app’s 2,000+ guided meditations; Sleep, which houses restful and relaxing meditations for deep sleep; Radio, where you can find mindfulness music and sound scapes for focus and calm; and finally the For You tab, which is really what makes this app stand out.

Throughout your use of this app, you’ll be prompted to provide information about your preferences, goals, and the type of support you’re looking for. The app will then offer personalized daily coaching videos paired with guided meditations on the For You tab. You can choose what length you’d like your daily meditations to be—from five to 30 minutes—depending on your schedule and level of practice. Opportunities to dive deeper include meditation courses, expert Q&As, breath work, journaling prompts, and more.

Whether you’re looking to reduce stress and anxiety or seeking support for overall mental health, the Mindfulness.com app is a solid resource. The multitude of functionalities offered by this app puts your mindfulness journey in your hands and enables you to grow in the direction of your choosing at your own pace.

Paid option: For $84.99 per year (with a 14-day free trial) or $169 for a lifetime membership, both with a 30-Day money-back guarantee, Mindfulness Plus+ includes: daily mindfulness video coaching and meditations; courses and tools to help manage anxiety, sleep, and stress; over 2,000 meditations, calm music, nature soundscapes, and more.

Available for iOS, Android, and web

Entry price: Free

Insight Timer has a huge library of content: over 80,000 free guided meditations from over 10,000 teachers on topics like stress, relationships, healing, sleep, creativity, and more.

Right from the beginning, the app feels like a global community—the world map on the home screen shows a collective of 18 million meditators, and announces, “741k today, 7k now.” After you finish a meditation, you’ll learn exactly how many people were meditating “with you” during that time—and by setting your location, you can even see meditators nearby and what tracks they’re listening to.

Once you find a teacher you enjoy—like Jack Kornfield, Tara Brach, Sharon Salzberg, or Rhonda Magee—you can follow them to make sure you don’t miss any new content. You can also tune in to free talks for life advice and inspiration. For those craving real-time interactions, Insight Timer offers live events every hour of the day to join on a whim or plan into your schedule.

You can even sign up to Circle for Teams, one of their newer offerings, which allows you to create circles (read: groups) to meditate in real-time with friends or colleagues.

If you prefer a quieter meditation, however, you can simply set a timer and meditate to intermittent bells, calming ambient noise, or soothing music.

Depending on your preferences, Insight Timer’s extensive collection can be either a blessing or a curse—an endless list of choices that leave you overwhelmed or a buffet of tempting options to sink your teeth into.

Paid option: For $60 per year (with a 30-day free trial), you get access to courses with well-known teachers, the ability to download meditations and listen offline, and advanced player functions like repeat mode and fast forward and rewind.

3) Smiling Mind

Available for iOS, Android, and web

Entry price: Free

Smiling Mind hits the sweet spot for a free mindfulness app in so many ways.

The not-for-profit app features hundreds of meditations, enough to keep you engaged without overwhelming you with choice. They are organized into structured programs like Mindful Foundations (35 sessions), Sleep (6 sessions), Digital Detox (8 sessions), and Stress Management (10 sessions), but you have the flexibility to choose where to start and to easily jump between programs. Most meditations are in the five- to fifteen-minute range, with a few practices up to 45 minutes for advanced meditators. Smiling Mind also offers bite-sized meditations between 2 to 5 minutes for moments when you’re in need of a quick, mindful pause in the day.

Downloaded by over 5.5 million people, the app also has a variety of specialized programs for families, children and teens of various ages, healthcare workers, and educators (including curricula they can use in the classroom); all developed with the help of psychologists and health professionals.

While you could use a meditation app as a temporary break from your hectic life, Smiling Mind wants you to take your mindfulness practice off the cushion and into the rest of your day. Interspersed with some of the meditation programs are instructions for “activities” like Journaling Exercise, Go Offline, Where Did My Food Come From, and Count Your Senses. In the Count Your Senses activity, for example, the audio prompts you to bring your attention to your senses by counting things that can be seen, felt, heard, smelled and tasted.

Smiling Mind was originally created for kids, so they offer a robust selection of kid- and youth-appropriate mindfulness sessions.

Created by a nonprofit by the same name, Smiling Mind is entirely free—so you don’t have the distraction of paid content that’s inaccessible to you as a free user. The app wants to put a “smile on your mind”—and it might just succeed.

Paid option: None

4) UCLA Mindful

Available for iOS and Android

Entry price: Free

If all the research on mindfulness has persuaded you that you need to meditate, the UCLA Mindful app could be a good place to start.

Developed by the Mindful Awareness Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the app features about a dozen meditations of different types in English and Spanish. You can learn to focus on your breath, your body, or sounds; work with difficult emotions; and cultivate loving-kindness in sessions ranging from 3 to 19 minutes long.

If you’re new to mindfulness, you might choose to take advantage of their Getting Started section, which offers information on what mindfulness is, how to choose a meditation, which posture is best for your practice, and what research-backed benefits you might expect from it.

As a bonus, the app also offers longer meditations that it calls “podcasts.” These are half-hour audio recordings of meditations that include talks, typically by UCLA Director of Mindfulness Education Diana Winston, before and after the meditation, as well as plenty of silent practice time.

If you’re looking for an app that is heavily grounded in the science of mindfulness, you can put your trust in UCLA Mindful.

Paid option: None

5) Healthy Minds Program

Available for iOS and Android

Entry price: Free

The Healthy Minds Program app wants to help you develop the skills for a healthy mind—by strengthening mental focus, decreasing stress, and growing resilience, compassion, and better immune health.

Founded by neuroscientist Dr. Richard Davidson (who also founded the research institute Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison), the app integrates neuroscience and research-based techniques with meditation training to increase overall well-being.

The framework of the app’s mindfulness and well-being training is organized into four pillars: Awareness, Connection, Insight, and Purpose. Each pillar consists of three to five parts, and each part contains three series and multiple sessions within. For the Connection pillar, for example, the Innate Self-Worth series includes five sessions packaged to foster self-worth (think sessions like Practice Seeing the Good In Ourselves, and Learn Negativity Bias). You have a choice of either a Sitting or Active type of practice—“active” practices include guidance for being mindful while you exercise, or during your commute—and you can customize the length of time (five minutes to 30 minutes).

The app offers a collection of 27 meditations outside their four-pillar wellness framework, including one-minute Micro Practices for when you’re in need of a brief respite.

At times the podcast-style app may encourage more thinking compared to typical guided meditations, but for the listener who is seeking guided meditations with the greater goal to increase awareness, cognition, and well-being, Healthy Minds Program app may be just the ticket.

Paid option: None
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June 17, 2026
How To Meditate as an Adult — Even With Noise around you

The crack team at How to Adult takes on basic seated meditation. Take 5 minutes and follow the demonstration.

It takes so much energy to just be sometimes.

Add in adult responsibilities like work, family, relationships, finances, and worry about the world, and it can all feel like way too much.

While mindfulness meditation can’t take away the stressors of grown-up life, it can help us regulate our nervous systems, process emotions, improve memory and sleep, and bring clarity in our decision-making. And these are all benefits that can help us at least learn how to adult with a little more peace.

If you’re curious about starting a practice but aren’t sure where to start, the creators of the How to Adult Youtube channel crafted a five-minute primer on how to meditate. They discuss the benefits, the practice—including some pointers from Mindful on basic seated meditation.

All you need is five minutes and a chair to follow the demonstration.

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May 20, 2026
Rest Your Body In Gratitude With A 12-Minute Meditation
Take a restorative moment to release tension and feel deeply into gratitude for your hard-working body.
Taking a moment to pause with the intention to simply allow our bodies to rest in awareness can bring about a great sense of restoration and renewal to the heart. Our bodies are so overworked and often ignored. This guided awareness practice will allow us to feel a sense of gratitude for our body, in all of its beauty and mystery.

A 12-Minute Meditation to Rest Your Body in Gratitude

Read and practice the guided meditation script below, pausing after each paragraph. Or listen to the audio practice.
1. Starting off, find the posture that feels comfortable for you in this moment. There are many different postures that we can choose from. Check in with your body to sense into what posture is best for me right now?
2. Once you’ve found that posture, just begin to notice and feel your body here and present in this moment, not trying to fix anything or to change anything about the body. Oftentimes, the body can be used just for the purpose of working, striving, and achieving, but in this moment, we’re inviting our bodies to just rest naturally.
3. Take a few moments to feel what it means to be alive in your body right now. With attention resting lightly on the body, just notice: How is my body expressing its aliveness in this moment? Maybe that’s with lots of sensation, maybe the body just feels relaxed and at ease, or maybe there’s energy moving through some of our bodies. Whatever is true for your body right now, allow this aliveness to be what you sense into in this moment. This is my body and I’m grateful for my body.
4. Now, allow your attention to lightly rest on the sensations associated with the body touching whatever is supporting it. Maybe it’s the floor or a cushion, or a bed or couch. Allowing your attention to lightly rest, feel the liveness of the body touching and being supported by whatever is under you. This is my body resting, supported by what’s under me at this moment and I’m grateful for this body and for this support and this moment to rest. Resting just like a newborn rests in the arms of a parent or caregiver. Allow your body to rest, letting the support, the stability, and the comfort of having something holding you really infuse your body and your awareness. In this moment, I’m being held and supported and this support is stable, and unconditional, and I am grateful. Continue to feel the connection and the support of whatever is holding you in this moment, remaining connected to that experience.
5. We’re going to begin to invite our bodies to rest in the feeling of the space around the body. So, we’re really just allowing our attention to rest on the skin of the body. And with each exhale, let your attention begin to relax and expand out beyond the skin, just going out a few inches around the skin, resting in this space. Rather than focusing entirely on the physicality of the body, now we’re inviting the energy in the body—the tingling, the sensations—to actually rest in the space around us. You might use your imagination a little bit to imagine that, with every exhalation, you begin to sense your body being held by the vastness of the space surrounding the body.
6. It may be helpful to start with your back, inviting the back to rest. Just let go into the space behind you. And shifting to one side of the body, feeling that side, feeling the skin, and then inviting that side of the body to just let go. To relax into the space around that side of the body. And then going to the front of the body: feeling the skin, the body sensations, and the aliveness, and just allowing the front of the body to be held and to rest into the space in front. And lastly, arriving at the other side of the body, sensing the skin of the body, then letting your attention relax into the space around that side of the body.
7. For a few moments, as you’re breathing in and out naturally, allow your attention to rest as the body is resting, in the space around the body. The body can let go now. Breathing in, feeling the body held in our awareness. Breathing out, we’re grateful for the space around the body. It allows the body to relax.
8. As we bring this practice to a close, the invitation is for you to place a hand on your heart, feeling a sense of gratitude and appreciation for the body, the space around the body, and this moment of resting. And remember that gratitude for the body is a way that we can always reconnect with this sense of rest, presence, and ease.
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May 14, 2026
Cultivating Courage and Confidence in Motherhood
My memories of motherhood are filled with moments of self-doubt. No mother alive doesn’t go through some self-doubt. Given all of the ideas of what is best for children, it is easy to doubt your decisions. From the mundane to the seemingly “big decisions,” it is easy to spiral into negative emotion doubting ourselves.

A client of mine spent some time talking with me about the fact that she and her son and husband didn’t have a ritual for dinner together. It made sense for her family and their schedule that her son ate before her husband got home, yet nearly every day she would have thoughts of doubt about whether that was really okay. Turns out it was just fine, as now he is a wonderful young adult and they are very close. It seems silly looking back that we can get so hung up on things like this but it’s easy to do. How do we know it’s going to be okay?

Magazines, newspapers, and websites often produce stories out of research findings that show how some action or behavior is linked to some outcome, even when there is no definitive evidence that it was the cause for the outcome. The best test of how something works for your family is how it works for your family, over time!

How nice it would be to have a crystal ball to be able to know for sure that any given choice would be the “right choice,” and that everything would turn out okay. The mind can blow things way out of proportion and make the risk to their development and well-being seem enormous. In our grasping for certainty and our fear of our doubt, we may create a lot of optional suffering. It is helpful to kindly remind yourself that kids are resilient and that you can be too. You can always make new choices after seeing the outcome.

When Fear Is Present

Like self-doubt, fear is another major topic in parenting. From the barrage of news reports about terrible things happening to children, mass shootings, catastrophic weather events, wars, etc., there is plenty to fearfully focus on. Add to that “time travel” in the mind, thoughts of what might or could happen, and that’s a whole lot of optional suffering in motherhood. Using mindfulness, especially a regular practice of mindfulness of thoughts and feelings, can help you step out of autopilot to see if you are actually suffering unnecessarily.

You can shift the focus of your mind at any time. Fear is not a sign that the feared outcome is going to happen. Trying to imagine how you would face something you are afraid of that isn’t happening right now is often a waste of energy and can lead to self-condemnation. My favorite mantras, “Just this moment,” and “Just here, just now,” really help me to get out of my mind and get back into the flow of life. When you find yourself trying to “think it away,” you have to choose to redirect the mind to just be with now, to be with what is right in front of you and let fear fade into the background. It may arise again, and you can refocus again.

I have come to understand that when fear is present, I must dig deep to move toward the thing I value. I don’t need to be rid of the fear to get through it.

I have come to understand that when fear is present, I must dig deep to move toward the thing I value. I don’t need to be rid of the fear to get through it. I can decide to dig deep anyway, giving myself positive self-talk along the way.

Uncovering Your Courage

Being brave or having courage is often described in a way that looks like having no fear. Motherhood calls for courage from the very beginning. We may go into it with sweet ideas, but we soon come to see how much we are needing to face that’s frightening or intimidating. Just like with appreciation, it is useful to stop and recognize where you were courageous. Acknowledging when you were afraid and did stuff anyway helps grow a sense of confidence.

A client of mine was worried about whether she could be brave in the face of helping her four-year old daughter through a surgery and an overnight stay at the hospital. She noticed that she often took her fearful thoughts to mean that she wouldn’t be brave. They were some kind of bad sign. If she thought these things now, how could she do it?

Anxious anticipation can undermine any of us.

She also felt terrible about herself for dreading it. I encouraged her to validate herself, when she noticed the dread, by saying, “This is really hard. It’s okay.” She found it really helpful to acknowledge that simple fact, rather than to indict herself as a bad mother for all of the fear and negative thoughts. No one wants to go through hard things, and there is so much that is hard. It’s really okay to acknowledge it.

Choosing to Be Brave

I will always remember one of the more profound moments when I decided to be brave; where I showed myself that I could be courageous. I was finishing up the bath with my toddler son when I heard my toddler daughter fall in the other room. I ran to see her and found she had fallen and split her chin open. Blood was everywhere and I was freaked out. Here was one of the moments as a mother I had feared I wouldn’t be up to when it finally arrived. I was terrified.

Despite the urge to cry and run the other way, I soothed her and cleaned her up anyway. After calling the pediatrician’s office who recommended I take her to the emergency room to see if she needed stitches, I called my husband to tell him to drop everything and come home. I told my husband he would be going to the ER with her!

We can choose again and again to turn toward what we want for ourselves or our child, regardless of the mind’s first reaction.

It dawned on me a few minutes after I hung up with him that I wanted my kids to see me be strong. I wondered what kind of message I would be sending my daughter, who was leaning on me and my soothing, if I sent her off with her dad who had just come home from being gone all day. Certainly, it wouldn’t have hurt her, but I realized here was an opportunity.

So, as much as I dreaded it, I asked my husband to stay with our son and I took her to the ER. A few stitches and several hours later we were back home and doing fine. Courage and confidence are not something you have or not. Remember the growth mindset. We can choose again and again to turn toward what we want for ourselves or our child, regardless of the mind’s first reaction.

When we string together moments like that, those choices lead to courage and confidence. Another gift of motherhood! Where I once went running away, I tamed my fears of spiders, bees, and snakes as well! Motherhood can show us how brave we can be.

Excerpt reproduced with author’s permission from Just This Moment: A Guide for Moms Who Want to Enjoy Parenting, Raise Great Kids and THRIVE! by Elizabeth Torres, Psy.D. ABPP. (2019).
Mindfulness for Kids

When we teach mindfulness to kids, we equip them with tools to build self-esteem, manage stress, and skillfully approach challenges. Explore our guide on how to introduce mindfulness and meditation to your children—at any age. Read More

Mindful Staff

June 11, 2020
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May 6, 2026
On the Other Side of Sadness: Teaching Our Kids (and Ourselves) That It’s Okay to Feel Anything

My six-year-old daughter, Opal, wants nothing more than to go to the Humane Society to visit the dogs that “need the most love.” So we leave right from a half-day of school to do just that, eating almond butter and jelly sandwiches on the way.

The entryway of the Boulder Valley Humane Society smells like wood chips. There is a stack of hamster cages by the front door, placed like intended impulse purchases, like Chapstick and breath mints at Target.

“May I help you?” The pleasant lady behind the counter says with a mouth that is more gums than teeth. I tell her we’d like to visit a dog or two that are especially in need of love.

“Hmmm,” she says, thinking, with a close-mouthed smile. “Yes, Leo could use a visit. He’s big, that ok?”

We have an 85-pound lab at home. I assure her we are accustomed to Big.

We find Leo asleep on a bed in a very large crate with a bone-shaped sign marked “Sweetie pie.” He is a five-year-old pit bull with a face as wide as a loaf of bread and fur the shade of sand. We return to the front room where we wait for a staff person to bring him out.

I notice as we walk through the halls, many—but not all—of the dogs have the same bone-shaped signs hanging from their cages, but with all different descriptions: “Playful!” “Timid.” It occurs to me that the ones without the signs must not be as forthcoming in their nameable characteristics. In my mind I imagine hosting a party in the New Year where I’ll have each guest wear a little sign around their neck that states one of their prominent qualities: People pleaser. Observer. Perfectionist.

Leo busts through the swinging doors, pulling a staff member behind him on a pink leash. This should be an indication of what we’re in for, but I grab the leash anyway and out the front doors we go. Walking this dog is essentially like walking a linebacker who is heading in the opposite direction. I desperately try to keep my footing while he pulls me down a muddy decline and we leave Opal behind, yelling MOM!

Giving this dog love is proving to be an arduous task. So we start to head back towards the building where we came from.

As we walk, I notice the fur is missing from the tops of both of Leo’s ears and there are chalky mushroom-shaped lumps on his skin where the hair should be growing. Same on the backs of his legs. There are pin stripes in his short fur where the hair doesn’t grow, much more subtle than the scars that would have come from the mouth or claws of another animals.

Opal says, “Why does he look like that?”

I tell her it looks like he’s been in a fight with another dog. Harmless enough—animals fight. I don’t say that it looks like he has probably been in dogfights. That he was likely rescued from a rough situation with either an abusive owner or an owner who condoned violence. The kind of scenario that gives pit bulls a bad name. He is horrid on a leash—left both of my hands red and burned from the yanking—but he doesn’t seem to have any fear of or aggression towards people. This, to me, is a marvel.

Upon our return, we catch sight of a man playing with a pit bull puppy, smiling and laughing as the pup climbs into his lap then flops over the side. I can see that Opal wants that experience, so we give Leo a final head-scratch and then ask to trade him in for a puppy.

The Discomfort, the Squirming Away, the Return to Presence

We take one of seven pit bull puppies to a fenced-in area outside. The fresh air and the puppy-energy feel like a relief. He’s as small as a football and slick-black except for his belly and the tips of his paws, which are pure white. Watching him teeter and fumble from point A to point B is pure comedy. Opal is beside herself with delight.

Then she asks the inevitable question: “Can we take him home?”

I tell her no. A puppy is way too much work. They poop and chew on everything. But we can come visit him next week.

“What if he’s gone by then?”

Opal doesn’t say much on the way home. “Blackbird” by the Beatles is playing on the radio—Take these broken wings and learn to fly. I can see her in the rear-view mirror gazing out the window with a million-mile stare.

I tell her that if he’s gone, that would mean a good family adopted him. These puppies would probably get adopted really fast.

Opal doesn’t say much on the way home. “Blackbird” by the Beatles is playing on the radio—Take these broken wings and learn to fly. I can see her in the rear-view mirror gazing out the window with a million-mile stare.

At home, Opal drapes her body over my lap as we sit on the couch. Our huge lab is snoring at my feet. Opal is sniffling and periodically wipes her nose on her sleeve. I caress her hair.

She says, “What if nobody wants to adopt Leo?” Plump little tears pool in the corners of her eyes.

I tell Opal that maybe we shouldn’t return to the Humane Society if it’s just going to break her heart. But that only upsets her more and I quickly realize those words are counter to everything we’ve been teaching her.

We—the Grimes family—have spent the better part of a year as a foster family. And we frequently talk about how we never need to shy away from big emotions, especially when they come as a repercussion of helping others. But it’s such a habit to either tense-up or cower in the face of unhappiness, and to want to shield others from the pain of being human.

“Honey, the Humane Society will find a good home for Leo. And for the little puppy and all his brothers and sisters.”

“But what if the man who adopts them is mean?”

I know there are no shortcuts to getting to the other side of sadness aside from going through it.

“Oh honey,” I say. I am constantly at odds with how much truth to share with her about this crazy, uncertain, often-terrifying-but-also-beautiful-and-miraculous world. I swing back and forth between feeling like I say too much, and not knowing what else to say.

So I return to simply paying attention—to my own thoughts, my own discomfort, my own shallow breath, my own want to talk about happier things—because I know there are no shortcuts to getting to the other side of sadness aside from going through it.

I ask, “Can you take a deep breath with me?”

“Uh-huh.” She is looking up at me now as we inhale and exhale. Choppy, partial breaths at first, then calm and deep.

“Hey, it’s okay to feel sadness, sweetie. Fact is, there is a lot of sadness in the world. We just keep doing what we can. And you did good today, giving love like you did.”

It in that moment, she stands up, gathers herself, and flashes me a tiny but genuine smile as she moves on with her day.

Realizing: It’s Okay to Feel My Own Sadness, Too

Two days later, we take a trip to visit our beloved foster baby of nearly a year who returned to live with her parents three weeks earlier. This baby, we’ll call her Little Blue Eyes.

I’m so pleased to find her looking happy and healthy, very connected to her mother. She has an adorable room with quilts on the walls, loads of toys and books. Their pit bull strangely resembles the one from the humane society, though he is exponentially more calm and civilized.

I didn’t realize it, but many of my feelings of loss had been shuffled in with the hubbub of the holidays and travel. The grief is immediately present when I rest my gaze on her face and hear her say OpalOpalOpal.

All good news. And yet, in spite of the fact that we will likely see her again, it feels as if this visit is a good-bye. Little Blue Eyes went home days before Christmas and I didn’t realize it, but many of my feelings of loss had been shuffled in with the hubbub of the holidays and travel. The grief is immediately present when I rest my gaze on her face and hear her say OpalOpalOpal.

The sorrow feels like fatigue at first, then grumpy over-sensitivity during dinner. Then, later, after Opal is asleep, a torrent of tears comes like a valve has burst behind my eyes. I can’t stop it, though my first inclination is to do just that. My mindful self is telling me that crying is a natural and healthy reaction, and that I can relax with my sadness. But my body—bones and muscles—wants to make the discomfort go away. I am aware of all of this.

I make my way into our bedroom where Jesse is watching TV. He sees my face and says, “Little Blue Eyes?”

I think of how intense these emotions feel to me, a “big strong grown-up,” and I can only imagine how the same vast emotions must feel to my daughter, on the planet only six years and with much less experience in seeing her feelings through to the other side. It’s up to us to show her that emotions are fluid, always in flux.

I nod and lie down next to him. I put my head on his chest the way Opal did with me a few days earlier. His heart is in my ear like a distant drum against my shifting breath. I think of how intense these emotions feel to me, a “big strong grown-up,” and I can only imagine how the same vast emotions must feel to my daughter, on the planet only six years and with much less experience in seeing her feelings through to the other side. It’s up to us to show her that emotions are fluid, always in flux.

“It’s okay to feel sad,” Jesse says to me. “I feel sad, too.”

These are the same words I spoke to Opal when we were on the couch, the same compassionate tone. I sit up and stretch my arms high and to the sides, the sound of inner-movement like a soft rumble deep in the canals of my ears. Some life re-enters my bones.

Those words, “It’s okay to feel sad,” open a window in the tiny, claustrophobic room of emotion I am crouched in. And it isn’t so stifling anymore. This is what happens when I am mindful of not trying to manipulate, hide, or wrestle with my sadness. I can let it roam more freely until, naturally and eventually, it simply dissolves on the back of an unsuspecting outbreath.

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May 2, 2026