Room for the dark

People often tell me I’m too positive.

Too hopeful.

Too bubbly.

Too trusting.

Too much light in a world that, frankly, feels more grey than gold.

And I get it.

I believe in trust, in humanity, in starting from a place of love. I want to hold on to the hope that things can work out. That people can be better. That the world can shift into something softer, kinder.

I’ve grown into that mindset over the years. It’s something I’ve chosen. Not because life has always been easy, but because it hasn’t.

But I also get it. I get how that mindset might look ... to someone who’s gone through real hell. To someone who’s been mistreated, hurt, silenced. To someone who’s watched the world grow more cynical by the day. Where even the smallest ask feels like a burden. Where kindness feels rare. Where trust feels naive.

To those people, I probably look golden. Shiny. Maybe even fake.

Because yes, we live in a world where terrible things happen. We don’t live in a shiny, polished world. Bullying, assault, grief, trauma, injustice. It’s all real. It’s everywhere. We live in a world where people get hurt. And thanks to global communication, we see everything. Even though data says the world is safer than it used to be, it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it.

And so I want to say this clearly:

There must be room for darkness. For grief. For rage. For sadness.

Not every day needs to be grateful.

Not every moment needs to be soft.

Not everything is a lesson.

Not every pain is a path to growth.

Some things just hurt.

Some experiences are just unfair.

Some people go through things that no human should ever have to carry, and they carry it anyway.

So please don’t mistake my hope for ignorance.

Don’t confuse my gratitude with denial. I don’t believe in silencing the hard parts. I believe in holding space for them.

And I never want my words - about hope, or love, or light - to sound like I’m ignoring the bad.

There’s room here for the bad days too. There are days when everything is heavy. When it all feels like too much. When you’re angry. Bitter. When life sucks and nothing helps.

You deserve space for those feelings. You deserve to name them. You deserve to not be told to “cheer up” or “look on the bright side.”

The only thing I ever try to offer is this:

Once you’ve felt it.

Once you’ve screamed, sobbed, raged, collapsed.

You get to decide what happens next.

You don’t have to "move on."

You don’t have to find "closure."

But you can choose not to let the pain cast a shadow over everything else that comes next.

Healing doesn’t mean pretending. It doesn’t mean being okay. It just means you start to find space for something else. It means you start to shape life around what happened, not erase it.

So yes, I choose love.

I choose trust.

I choose hope.

But never at the expense of truth.