If only what’s happening to me/ were like that cattail out the window,// soft as childhood sadness,/ catching the light.// Or, how earlier––the small gray rocks along the shore,/ as I approached, became birds.

Fay Dillof

Adult sadness has harder edges and is framed in tones of finitude and certainty. It seems to know all the answers and reached the conclusion. It dances alone and does not fly. It feels more like cement than feathers.

Childhood sadness is softer than adult sadness. Before cuts and bruises and scar tissue. Before history and words and consequences. Before hours and days and years.

It seems to me we must make peace with childhood sadness before adult sadness makes sense. (If adult sadness ever really does make sense.) I wish it were enough to simply declare our love for our childhood selves to fill the void or dress our wounds or ease the pain. I wish it were enough to simply breathe into adult sadness, again and again, until it softens and allows us into our very core. It wish it were enough to see all sadness like days and seasons and tides that rise and fall and ebb and flow. Somewhere in there — in sadness itself — is the connection we all so desperately seek.