The Thorn Institute

Holding two truths at once

Two things can be true at the same time. A life can be genuinely good — chosen, loved, well built — and still carry a loss that does not resolve. Most of the difficulty people bring to this work is not the loss itself; it is the belief that one of the two truths has to win.

The scales tip. Some days one truth is almost all of it; some days the other. The piece is one example, written from the inside — Daniel's own account of not having children.

The work is not to resolve the contradiction. It is to stop demanding that it resolve. Grief and contentment sitting in the same chest is not a failure of either one.

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