The past few weeks have been difficult. Not that everything is going terribly wrong, but things certainly aren’t going right either. And it’s not just work. Life, in general, has felt heavier than usual.

When things get tough, I try to take a step back—reflect on what’s happening, explore why I feel the way I do, and consider what I might do to shift things in a better direction. One technique that has helped in the past is The Self-Awareness Onion—a method of repeatedly asking yourself why until you uncover the root cause of your emotions. (Spoiler: It’s usually not what you first think it is.) But this time, after all that introspection, I don’t have any big revelations or groundbreaking takeaways.

And that’s okay.

We tend to look for meaning in our struggles. It feels like every hard moment should come with a lesson, a path forward, or at least a silver lining. But sometimes, life is just hard, and there’s no immediate wisdom to extract from it. There’s no grand realization waiting at the end of a rough day, week, or month—just the experience of enduring it.

Sometimes, work piles up. Personal challenges weigh on you. Plans stall because of things outside your control. Your body and mind don’t feel like they’re cooperating. Like they say, when it rains, it pours. And in those moments, searching for a silver lining can feel exhausting—like another task you need to accomplish.

But what if we let go of that expectation? What if we allowed ourselves to sit with the discomfort without rushing to fix it, justify it, or turn it into something profound?

There’s value in simply acknowledging when things are tough. Talking about the struggles, even when we don’t have a solution, helps remove the pressure to always be okay. It gives us permission to be human—to experience the full range of emotions without needing to tie them up neatly with a bow of wisdom.

We share our wins, our lessons, and our transformations. But we should also share the messy in-between—the moments when things just are. When we’re waiting for clarity that hasn’t come yet. When we’re not ready to look back on a hard time with a sense of resolution.

So if you’re in a season where things feel heavy, know that you don’t have to turn it into a learning moment right away, or at all. You don’t have to find the silver lining today.

Some clouds just need to pass on their own.

Keep the Conversation Going

Have you ever gone through a rough patch where there wasn’t an easy takeaway? How do you sit with those moments? If this post resonates with you, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Or, if you just need a space to say, “Yeah, it’s been tough”—that’s welcome too.