Holding Space for Both the Highs and Lows

The other day, while watching Daniel Tiger with my daughter, we learned, “sometimes you feel two feelings at the same time, and that’s ok.” 

This was an instance when that sentiment was true. Maybe you have endured some really, really difficult things. And, in the very same place, you’ve also experienced some truly beautiful things. Both can be true.

Last week, we were on a safari game drive with our close friends, all piled into a rented Land Cruiser at sunrise with three babies under three between us, dodging baboons and maneuvering through a herd of zebras. Later, on our way to our picnic lunch, we spotted an elusive elephant through the brush. We ate PB&Js in a little hut on the lakeside while the hippos grunted alarmingly close by and a cluster of impalas meandered past.

Just a few hours later, our epileptic two-year-old had a raging fever, was vomiting, and was too miserable to even sleep. We cut our trip short and rushed back to the city to see a doctor. And by ‘rushed back to the city,’ I mean we made the painstakingly tedious three-hour drive on a winding two-lane road edged with people and bicycles, doing the dance of trying to pass the slow trucks we were stuck behind whenever there was a long enough straightaway as I sat squished between car seats trying to appease our sick toddler with one hand while feeding the baby puffs and bananas with the other hand. And by ‘see a doctor’, I mean we endured an extremely frustrating cultural experience where we kept being told the doctor was coming “in ten minutes.” An hour later—and well past our babies’ bedtime—we were still waiting. In the end, it was confirmed that our daughter had malaria.

In one day we had experienced both the truly incredible moments our life in East Africa allows us to have, as well as some of the incredibly frustrating, overwhelming, and downright scary moments. 

I’m sure you are familiar with the game ‘highs and lows’—where you go around sharing the best part and the worst part of your day or your week. I use this regularly with the group of eleventh grade girls I mentor, and it’s such a simple tool for reflection and a gateway to deeper conversation. The day I described above, however, seemed to play out like an extreme example of highs and lows, and it reminded me of something a former coworker shared with me in my early days here. She said in her several years overseas she had experienced both the highest highs and lowest lows of her life.

I don’t know exactly what it is about the overseas life that makes this true. Those high highs—the wild, adventurous, once-in-a-lifetime experiences we get to have, and get to have often. And the deep, rich, friends-like-family community unique to expat circles. On the flip-side, maybe those low lows stem from the fact that stakes are much higher when things do go wrong—when you can’t get the necessary medical care or other resources you need, or when cultural stress has worn you down to the bone.

The other day, while watching Daniel Tiger with my daughter, we learned, “sometimes you feel two feelings at the same time, and that’s ok.” 

This was an instance when that sentiment was true. Maybe you have endured some really, really difficult things. And, in the very same place, you’ve also experienced some truly beautiful things. Both can be true. Maybe recognizing this as a possible pattern for your time overseas could serve as a helpful framework for processing: the lows feel lower and the highs feel higher and it can all be happening at the same time.

Full disclosure: my family is in the middle of an incredibly difficult year right now. To paint it in broad strokes, we’ve been enduring things maybe you can relate to: burnout at work, navigating cross-cultural medical care in a way that makes us doubt whether we should even be here, walking through hard circumstances alongside family members in a different country, and a myriad of smaller cultural frustrations that we just don’t have the bandwidth to deal with in a healthy way. This season truly feels like one of the lowest lows we’ve been in, and I’m not sure I have a pithy lesson to share from it at this point. I hope that’s ok with you. 

Even so, I want to remember that more than one thing can be true at the same time, and that’s ok. There can still be glimpses of joy in the midst of trying times. There can be highs in the same week there are lows.

And I can hold space for all of it. 

I invite you to do so, too.