The Strongest Thing You Can Do Is to Fall Apart
Your happiness may be directly proportionate to the permission you give yourself to grieve.
Not what you expected, right?
We’ve been taught something very different. We’ve been taught that resilience looks like holding it together. That strength looks like getting back to work and moving on. That maturity means being able to experience something devastating on Tuesday and still show up for patients on Wednesday with your hair done, your smile on, and your schedule running on time.
We are exceptionally good at this.
I have met women who miscarried in the morning and were back to treating patients that same afternoon. Women whose mothers died and who doubled down on work because “keeping busy” was a way to cope. Women whose marriages were falling apart, whose families were struggling, whose lives felt completely unrecognizable and who responded by becoming even more productive.
Because somewhere along the way, many of us learned that this is what strong women do.
But we have resilience completely backwards!
Your ability to be resilient, courageous, peaceful, present, and even HAPPY is directly related to your willingness to feel the emotions you’ve spent your life trying not to feel. Boom. I said it.
We Start Learning This At SUCH A YOUNG AGE.
A few weeks ago, my 14-year-old daughter developed Bell’s Palsy on the right side of her face. Just a few weeks before she starts high school.
She has spent the summer thinking about clothes and makeup and what freshman year would be like. Thinking about fitting in and friendships and all the things a 14-year-old girl is supposed to care about. And suddenly, half of her face has collapsed. I happened to be away when this happened but thankfully my husband took her to the ER and got her tested for Lyme and started on the obligatory Doxycycline and Corticosteroid regimen.
I asked Killian “How is she doing, Love? Please give her a hug for me”
His response? “Don’t worry, Tarryn, she’s totally fine. She’s handling it like an adult.”
The next day, when I called her pediatrician she said almost exactly the same thing. “If I know her she is probably being so mature about this”.
Right there I realized the messaging we get from a very young age…
Because I realized what we were unintentionally teaching her.
Good, responsible, mature, resilient girls handle hard things well by NOT expressing sadness.
Mature girls don’t fall apart. Strong girls keep going.
How early this begins! How many of us have spent our entire adult lives being rewarded for emotional suppression.
“I don’t know how you do it!”
Someone admires you because you went right back to work after the loss. Someone praises you because no one would ever know what was happening behind the scenes.
“You’re so strong.”
You learn to wear your ability to function through pain like a badge of honor.
But functioning is not the same thing as healing.
And emotional suppression is not resilience.
You Need to Fall Apart FIRST
When I finally came home, my daughter and I went hiking together in the woods. Just the two of us. And in the safety of space and time she was finally able to cry and to let it all out.
I didn’t try to convince her everything was going to be okay. I didn’t tell her to look on the bright side. I didn’t remind her of everything she should be grateful for. I didn’t rush her toward resilience.
I let her cry.
Because that was what she needed. That is what we have all needed.
I want you to imagine for a moment what it would feel like to have someone offer that same space to you. To hold you and say: Of course you’re sad. Of course this hurts. It makes complete sense that you feel this way. Cry.
And when you think you’re finished? Do you need to cry a little more?
There is no statute of limitations on grief.
There is no acceptable timeline for processing pain and loss.
There is no point at which you SHOULD be over something simply because the people around you would be more comfortable if you were.
Falling apart is step one.
Only then can resilience begin.
The Feelings You Don’t Feel Don’t Disappear
How many losses did you never fully grieve?
How many disappointments did you minimize because someone else “had it worse”? How many times were you furious but told yourself you shouldn’t be? How many times did something happen in your practice that deeply hurt you, and instead of feeling it, you immediately started figuring out how to FIX it or work through it?
But rather than letting yourself acknowledge, That really hurt me, your brain immediately starts working.
Maybe I didn’t explain it properly. Maybe I need to change my systems. What do I need to do to avoid that happening again?
DO. SOLVE. FIX. Anything but FEEL.
But the emotions we don’t process don’t simply evaporate. They become what I think of as emotional bruises. You may move through your life barely noticing they’re there until something presses on them. Then a relatively small experience hurts far more than the present moment seems to warrant.
A team member makes a comment. A patient questions you. Your sister-in-law says something. And suddenly the reaction feels enormous. The truth is that you’re not reacting only to what happened today. You’re feeling everything that never got permission to move through you before.
Your Busyness May Be Protecting You From Something
This is where I want you to get curious. Because high-achieving women have an incredibly socially acceptable way to avoid feeling and we get praised for it.
We tell ourselves we’re being productive when we’re actually protecting ourselves from the discomfort of being still long enough to FEEL what is happening inside of us.
Your nervous system may have learned that busyness is safer than feeling.
Because feeling sadness means surrendering control.
Feeling anger means admitting that something mattered.
Grieving means acknowledging that something was lost.
And none of those emotions come with a tidy action plan.
You cannot spreadsheet your way through grief. You cannot out-produce sadness. You cannot CE your way out of heartbreak. The work is simply allowing your body to do what it already knows how to do.
Feel. Cry. Release. Rest. Your body is not betraying you when emotion rises. It is trying to complete something.
We Don’t Need to Make Each Other Feel Better
There’s another layer to this.
We are uncomfortable with other people’s emotions too.
When someone we love is hurting, how quickly do we try to make it better by offering perspective or solutions. Anything that might make them stop hurting.
I remember when my brother died. My girlfriends lovingly tried to give me a reprieve from grieving. They ordered dinner and put on a funny movie. They were trying to take care of me. And I hated it. I didn’t need to laugh.
I needed to cry more.
The people around us often rush us through grief because they are uncomfortable sitting beside pain they cannot solve.
And it’s the same kind of love you may need to learn to give yourself.
You Don’t Have to Earn Your Way Back to Happiness
We’ve spent so much time trying to figure out how to become happier. More gratitude, better habits, better morning routines.
But sometimes happiness doesn’t always require adding something.
Sometimes it requires finally allowing something OUT. And sometimes that looks like an ugly cry. The kind that leaves you exhausted on the other side. What often comes afterward?
Space. Quiet. Relief. Maybe even peace. Because there is finally room inside of you again.
When you finally give yourself permission to feel what you’ve been carrying, you create space for something else. Presence. Connection. Peace. And eventually, happiness. Not the happiness you forced yourself to perform while everything inside of you was hurting.
The kind that has room to actually be felt.
If you have enjoyed this post I would love to hear from you and how you have noticed yourself suppressing processing grief as a woman in dentistry. You can also catch the full episode all about giving ourselves space to process sadness and anger as women dentists on The Business of Happiness Podcast, Episode #430 The Secret To Greater Resilience
A personal Invitation
If you recognized yourself in this article, perhaps in the way you’ve learned to keep going when something hurts, stay busy when you’re grieving, or put your emotions aside because there simply isn’t time to feel them, I want you to know you’re not alone.
As an orthodontist and Self-Leadership and Stress Management Coach for women dentists, these are the conversations I have every day.
You can schedule a time to connect with me HERE.
I can’t wait to meet you.
Only love,
Tarryn
