It’s Okay to Not Be Okay

The last few weeks have been heavy. There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from absorbing too much pain at once, from realizing again and again that bad things happen to good people, and that not everything can be explained or fixed.

This week isn’t about nutrition or physiology, at least not directly. It’s about a simpler truth: it is okay to not be okay.

I’ve lived enough life to know this much: we like to believe we are in control. We optimize, plan, prepare, and manage. And while we can influence our responses, our breath, and the people we surround ourselves with, much of life remains outside our control. Accepting that is not weakness. It is honesty.

In times like these, I think often of my cancer patients. Many arrive for treatment on days when they feel relatively well, fully aware that the hours ahead may leave them feeling worse. They know the side effects that may follow: the fatigue, the nausea, the malaise. They show up anyway. They show up knowing the toll that treatment may take on their bodies, their energy, their hope. That willingness to keep going, even when the weight of illness and the state of the world already feels unbearable, is a quiet and extraordinary kind of courage. A kind of courage that I draw strength from.

What I know to be true is this: strength does not always look like positivity or resilience. Sometimes it looks like showing up, breathing through the hard moments, and allowing yourself to be human. In a world that feels uncertain and heavy, that may be more than enough.