In the Space Between Drafts: Why Conflicting Emotions Make Sense
- Jul 14
- 2 min read
Have you ever found yourself experiencing seemingly conflicting emotions? When they seem to fluctuate several times throughout the day. It can be confusing at times. It makes you question how you really feel. But I have come to realize this . . .
Two things can be true.
Especially during particularly emotional times like transitions, we naturally feel a wide range of emotions and think any number of seemingly opposite thoughts about our situation. Because we are in between. Stuck in a space between drafts. Not quite who we were, but not quite yet who we are becoming.
While some transitions are widely recognized, such as graduating from high school or college, having a baby, getting divorced, changing jobs, moving, retiring, etc.
Others are sneakier.
We might be moving right along in our routine when we begin to feel a little nudge. A little whisper that something feels off. Something isn't quite the same anymore. You don't feel like yourself the way you used to. This happens in many, many settings and situations.
Take parenting, for example. The moment you settle into a rhythm—a sleep schedule, a stage, a way of relating to your child—it shifts again. This continues through every age and stage: infancy, childhood, the teenage years, even parenting adult children. You can feel proud and amazed by your child one moment and completely exasperated the next. Parenting is really a series of transitions—just as you adjust to one stage, another begins.
So back to the original statement of two things can be true. . .
We can feel love and frustration
We can be overjoyed and terrified
We can be devastated and excited
We can miss what was while looking forward to what's next.
We can feel incredibly strong and incredibly vulnerable.
We can be healing and still hurting.
We can know we made the right decision and still grieve what we lost.
We spend so much energy trying to decide which feeling is the real one, the right one, as though one emotion has to cancel out the other. We also might feel societal pressure. We're supposed to be overjoyed when we have a baby. We are expected to feel devastated when we lose our job. A graduation from college is supposed to be celebrated. If we feel something different or opposite, we are made to assume we are wrong.
But that's not how being human works.
You don't have to choose between gratitude and grief, hope and fear, peace and uncertainty.
They can sit beside each other.
Two things can be true.
And perhaps giving ourselves permission to hold both is one of the kindest things we can do for ourselves.
What two things are true for you right now?
If you're in one of those in-between spaces right now—holding two things that both feel true—the Your Life. . . in Draft worksheet is a good place to start sorting through it. It's a free set of reflective prompts and a small, doable next step, designed for exactly this kind of moment.
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