Finding Balance in Struggle: Exploring Yin and Yang in Daily Life

This is a transcript from episode #41 of the Let the Verse Flow Podcast.

When my mom got sick, all at once, I was thrust into the role of caregiver, healthcare proxy, and health advocate. I was her voice on some heavy matters, big decisions. She had prepared me as best as anyone could – my mom felt strongly about a person’s right to die the way they want. We began talking (and debating) about her desire not to have any life-sustaining medical procedures like resuscitation and tube feeding when I was 15. She felt strongly and kept a very organized filing cabinet with all the medical directives and legal documents I could ever need. Still, no one prepares you for this role, there isn’t a manual or unit in school about how to take care of your aging parents. How to navigate a complex medical world that makes decisions based on a myriad of factors that may lie outside of what’s good for you in that moment (or good for your loved one). But this episode isn’t about navigating those worlds, this is about navigating the worlds that continue around us simultaneously. The pull of the world in different directions (and sometimes all at once). What some call the yin and yang of life. Let’s explore all sides. 

Opposite Forces & Events Play Out in Our Lives

Forces of opposites exist in our lives. Opposites in action, circumstance, feelings and thoughts. I can be doing one action while planning for another, feeling one emotion in the extreme (but feeling its opposite in the background). Knowing that they co-exist. Here’s one example of how opposites played out in my life recently. I got a call from my mom’s assisted living facility saying that a blood test revealed an alarming finding that required her to be hospitalized immediately. She had been fighting off an infection and sleeping more than usual, so it wasn’t a complete surprise. But the way it all progressed from 0 to 100 in the span of a few days, was alarming (although if I think back, not all that unusual).

She’s going to the hospital, a good hospital, but one that is a two-hour ride away from my house. It’s at least a hospital that I trust. Do I remain calm because I know this hospital is good? Do I get sad and emotional because of my mom’s decline? Do I feel distrustful of how she will be handled in said good hospital? Do I get angry because this was supposed to be the start of a holiday weekend where I’d have a four-day rest from work, and now I’ll be rushing to the hospital all weekend? Yes. Yes to it all. How many thoughts can you have simultaneously? How many conflicting thoughts can you have at one time? And isn’t that emotionally exhausting? Yes, yes to it all.

Within the span of five minutes, there was a flood of emotions. Emotions all at once, not contained in nice, neat little time boxes that I could process and then move along. So the flood of emotions – sadness, fear, anger, and unending questions? Is she bleeding internally? Worry and overthinking coming on. I’ll have to cancel my plans – the bank appointment, the day out with my best friend I planned a month ago, the restful self-care I hoped to do, the podcast writing, the book reading.

It will all go bye-bye this weekend – I feel sad, not angry, not shameful for even thinking of myself. This thick stew of emotions all at once. This is a reactionary state – I know that too somewhere in the back of my mind, cause I’ve been working on reprogramming my mind to think differently. To not attach to this negative spiral of extreme thoughts that aren’t entirely true. Self-care doesn’t have to stop because I’ll be going to the hospital – it can exist in small pockets of time. But right now, extreme thinking has me in its grip.

I Don't Know How to Cry

I walked home on the verge of tears. The call came early evening as I was heading home from work for what I thought would be a vacation weekend. Things change. I’m walking through the park with tears in my eyes. I hate crying in public, but then again I’ve done it more in the last three years than at any time in my life. The mid to late 50s appear to be the time when I cry in public. I’ve no one to talk to at work these days, recently important co-workers and work friends have left my team, so there’s also this strange feeling of loneliness that I can’t tell anyone about at the moment. There’s no one to turn to here in this moment. The walk home is long and lonely. I cry, small held-back tears in public, but by the time I get to the front door of my building, I don’t care anymore. Here’s how the verge of tears can feel for me. This is I Don’t Know How to Cry.

I Don't Know How to Cry

By Jill Hodge

I did not know how to cry,
The moment, a heavy dark cloak, weighed on my shoulders
Pushing out energy but finding little release
The tears not fully formed, held back by some response
To the flying bats that scattered ‘round my cave

Some flew around my head, startled me,
No, stymied me
Some looked at me from crevices,
A lone specimen to see
Some came in close around my face
I covered my eyes,
As their wings unfurled to take me in

I did not know how to cry,
The moment weighed down by broken wings
I could not fly or leave this place
And tears need time, quiet and space

If this was home, so let it be
I settled on a smooth rock and let the bats envelop me

So I don’t know how to cry, but I’m crying nonetheless (those of you going through this type of stress will know exactly what I mean by this). When I enter my building, I discover that I have a package. It’s not a box I’m familiar with, not your typical Amazon purchase. It’s a box containing flowers. Who sent me flowers? It’s not a common occurrence, but I immediately think I know who it must be.

An Unexpected Turn of Events Changes the Moment

My best friend does things like this – she sends little gifts just because. But this isn’t a little gift, it’s a big box of flowers. She wouldn’t have known yet about my mom, so what could this be about? I start to play a sort of mental game with myself. I’m negotiating with myself. I stop tearing up for a moment, and think “If the flowers are from her, I will stop crying and start counting blessings.” I will dig deep into this stew of emotions and call up another one – gratitude. I think “I’ll feel so comforted to know she, my best friend who is so worthy, thought enough of me to send me flowers.” Will these flowers counteract the sadness, the fear and the anger I feel? Will I stop crying when I see them?

I walk toward the elevator and see that people are waiting. Have you ever noticed that when you are upset or don’t want to be around people, there they are? It’s that old Murphy’s Law feeling of getting the opposite of what you wanted. Let’s pull it together Jill, people are around. Turns out, it’s someone I know quite well, a friendly 20-something neighbor who’s intuitive and brimming with a positive spirit. I’m sure I look upset (I have a hard time hiding that). He sees the remnants of tears no doubt. He asks how I am, and says he can see that something is wrong. He looks and really listens as I say my mom is in the hospital. He doesn’t try to talk it away, he gives me a short hug and rubs my back for a second or two, but it’s a warm touch and heartfelt. Feels good. Somehow another side to these events starts to creep in. There’s caring here, something to counterbalance the sadness and fretting. Warmth.

I’m in my apartment now, I open the box, and take a quick, cursory look at the beautiful fall arrangement; I’m trying to find the card inside. I reach for it, there’s a printed message. I think “What has my friend written to me? What’s the occasion?” But it isn’t from my best friend, it’s a thank you bouquet – a thank you for speaking to some families at my mom’s assisted living facility.

I attend these family support meetings to offer support and answer questions as a “seasoned” family member of my mom’s assisted living facility. It’s a dubious distinction that means I’ve been through the wringer. I’ve made more than 50 hospital visits. I’ve cried, I’ve screamed, I’ve fretted, I’ve taken action, I’ve consulted experts, I’ve fought the system, I’ve learned. So I try to help other families now by answering their questions, by letting them see that things can calm down a bit and our loved ones can be comforted and cared for in ways that make our fretful minds settle down a bit. 

I do what I wish others had done for me – I help family members consider their options when deciding where to put their loved one who needs care. The flowers are a thank you for that, for sharing my advice and offering support to other families wrestling with the beast of caring for an elderly family member. 

I’m mildly disappointed that they aren’t from my best friend. The truth is, she gives me so much already, and I don’t need flowers from her when I have her love and friendship, but the story I was telling myself about this unexpected gesture in a challenging moment felt good. This new twist surprised me, and I’m already caught off guard.

A Well-Timed Bouquet of Flowers Changes Everything

The incredible bouquet, I try to take it in as best I can – wine- and rust-colored mums, cocks comb, roses, eucalyptus branches, green stems with red berries – is enchanting. It’s wrapped in burlap in an elegantly understated way that shows it’s sustainably sourced and the enormous bouquet (probably the biggest I’ve ever received) won’t fit in just one vase. I’ll have to break it up and spread the flowers around the house. It’s touching, it’s beautiful, but then it also occurs to me that I won’t be around much in the next few days to enjoy them – I’ll be at the hospital this weekend for long stretches, for days and days, and when I get home, I may be too tired to take in these beautiful flowers.

Do you see what I did there? I went from 0 to 100 in a matter of seconds. I went from “Wow, these are beautiful flowers!” to “Too bad I won’t be able to enjoy them.” We’ll get to that later; we’ll talk about that dichotomy. But for now, I am in the moment with these fragrant flowers. It’s the roses now that are giving off the most perfume. The lilies, these huge white lilies are closed up shut for the moment, showing me only their green underbelly. I wonder “Will those lilies open up?” 

I wipe away the tears and just look at them for a minute. What am I going to do with you, oh bouquet of flowers? What story do you belong to? How does this kind gesture fit into this challenging day? These flowers are too big to ignore. They weren’t solicited; it’s my pleasure to talk to families as I give them what I wish I had. Sometimes these families get emotional, and I remember that tender hurt. The same hurt I’ve felt a million times over my mom.

The flowers weren’t something I needed, I thought, but they did come at a strangely unexpected and difficult time. Are they here to co-exist with this hard time? Do the powers that be know that natural beauty always makes me feel close to my mom; that nature comforts me? And then I think about these conflicting, opposite emotions I’m feeling, I recall the concept of yin and yang; the good and the bad; the grief and the gratitude. All those opposites that play out in our lives. 

Gratitude Can Come Unexpectedly

What’s that feeling that’s rising up in me? Oh, yes, it’s gratitude. These situations and crises with my mom also have counterpoints, counterbalances – the good trying to peek through and me seeing it through the pain.

How is this world to be navigated through this yin and yang? Through the dichotomy between all the struggle that’s happening around me, mixed with all the good, the positive forces that are also at play?

Yin and Yang in Our Daily Life

Yin and Yang is a dualistic framework for understanding the balance of good and bad in our lives. The black and white circular nesting shapes, with one side that’s white and the other black, represent the way certain factors co-exist in our lives. The yin factors (the black side said to represent shadow, quiet, and stillness) and yang factors (the white side said to represent light, hardness, expansion, and action) do a sort of dance in our lives. This interconnectedness means that we can often have struggle and joy at the same time in our lives. The struggle of my mom’s hospitalization, for instance, alongside the sensory pleasure and happiness at receiving fragrant flowers. Because I enjoy nature so much, it’s hard for me to not let some positive feelings come into my life when I get flowers, and in this instance, it was at the same time that I was feeling some pain, sorrow, and anxiety. 

These feelings, brought on by two separate, but some would say complementary forces of positive and negative, happened together. That kind of feeling can overwhelm me, and it has for much of my life. It’s only recently as I study some Buddhist principles and meditate more regularly that I begin to accept these feelings as just feelings, and not necessarily something I have to take to put too much value in or attach narratives to.

The reality is that my mom’s Alzheimer’s and ill health is progressing. I will be going to the hospital again. When I feel sorrowful about that I don’t need to add a narrative in my head about all that that means. The loss of her, the stress, and the loneliness. For right now, I’m just trying to feel the emotions, name and understand them, and not attach anything else to them. To attach stories of future loss, and to examine the meaning of her illness doesn’t always help me, and in fact, it often makes it harder for me to deal with the struggle and pain. 

Yin & Yang: Balance & Interconnectedness

Have you noticed that in the black space of yin and the white space of yang, there is a dot of the other’s color? That represents the interconnectedness of the yin and the yang. Contained within one is the presence of the other. It’s a simple rendering that has powerful meaning. If applied to our emotional states, it can signify that we should expect both good and bad, sorrow and happiness, joy and pain, lightness and darkness, and positive and negative to come into our lives together. 

I don’t know about you, but I like having a roadmap and some general principles to hold onto when I’m struggling. There’s a balance of both and they exist in relation to each other. This duality opens the door to consider that in our times of struggle there will be the possibility, the Taoists might assert a certainty, of these opposing energies in our lives. More light or good forces will balance the dark or difficult. Life is rarely all good or all bad but balanced between the two. Negative experiences can have hidden blessings and offer us the chance to learn lessons from our lives. I certainly have learned more about myself in the last three years of my mom’s illness than I did at any other time in my life. That can’t be a coincidence. 

Personal Growth During My Mom's Illness

I’m more introspective, more self-loving, more gentle (and aware) with how I react to my emotional states, more assertive, and more knowledgeable (especially about dementia, the healthcare system, and finances). I’ve grown exponentially it seems. Then there’s the difficult side, it tempers this growth, the grief, the incredible stress, the reduction in physical wellness and self-care (I’m working on this one) and the loss of time to devote to other important relationships in my life. This long list of positives and negatives exist at the same time, and I need to see both so I can benefit from knowing that the story that “everything sucks” that catastrophizing narrative, is a lie.

There are amazing things that have come into my life as a result, and in balance with my mom’s illness. This podcast is one. I would never have started a podcast when my mom was healthy. I would never have started writing poetry and felt compelled to tell the world about my personal growth journey. 

These are dynamic, shifting forces, with the negative changing to positive and back again to negative within today or tomorrow. It is the way of life, and acceptance of it helps us handle the stew of emotions that can be thrust upon us.

The next step might be to accept the good and the bad as co-existing, balancing each other. Instead of labeling or casting these yin and yang forces as good or bad, we see them as a balanced flow of events and feeling states that make up our lives. I’m not fully there yet, but I can see that if I viewed all this as just the way the human experience is meant to be lived if I didn’t “fight” against the bad so much, perhaps these transient states wouldn’t stick around so long. Or perhaps they would be here the same amount of time, but I wouldn’t be attaching, clinging to the good so much that I negated the bad.

Baby steps in this direction. I’m OK with moving slowly, but I hope to move my thinking in that direction because fighting against these forces of positive and negative in our lives is exhausting, and some part of me feels its futile too.

I’ve also seen difficult times push me to be more resilient. Like a muscle, the more angst I have to handle, the more I bring mental, emotional, and sometimes physical resources to bear. I’m also much more able to feel gratitude for the things I still have. I cling to that gratitude sometimes as a way of handling the pain. That’s a good thing. 

Some days later I reflect on this hospitalization. Once I’ve lived through it and have my mom tucked safely back into her apartment, I reflect. I think about the two blood transfusions, the IV fluids, and the hand-holding, and how we made it through all those things to get to this place. She looks bright and smiley again when I visit on the morning of discharge. We are leaving the hospital, and she had a deep refresh while there.

The Other Side of Crisis: Time to Breathe Again

There’s her incredible smile again – my mom’s smiles hit you deep in the chest. They warm your soul like a soothing cup of coffee on a cold, blustery day. They also let me know that she’s still in there. Even though her verbal language impairment means we can’t have our incredible conversations anymore, the smile (the smile of love I’ve known my whole life, a smile that communicates love) is back. It tells me something special too. Those fretful train rides, those angst-ridden talks with doctors and care managers, those nights of exhausted sleep and depressive moments, they were worth it. I got her back and I know she wants to go home. 

A few days later as things settled down, I returned home one day after work and noticed this very sweet scent in the apartment.  It’s overpowering really, so much richer than any room freshener, and I have to take note of it. I follow my nose to one of the vases of flowers. I’ve fiddled and fooled with the flowers over the week, freshened their water, recut their stems, taken long, deep breaths to smell their fragrance, and tried to be present with them, tried to enjoy them. I notice that the vase that has the lilies (I separated them with a wish to give them room to come to life), has been transformed. Two of the three lilies have opened. They haven’t just opened, they have burst open! They are huge – the biggest lilies I’ve ever seen, and their interiors, the hanging filaments (I find out later they are called stamen) are heavy with pollen and hang over the interior of the flower with a presence. They have a certain sense of majesty.

I remember that worry that I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the flowers because of my mom’s hospitalization. It didn’t happen. Another worrisome lie I told myself. It didn’t manifest into the truth. It was a twisted “what if” that was completely false, and the truth is that the flowers outlived the hospitalization. And just when I was ready to rest and recoup from the whole hospital saga, they were home waiting for me, blooming forth to welcome me home. Perfuming my home and helping me settle the saga, another example of the yin and yang of life playing out. The coexistence of pain and pleasure, dark and light, sadness and joy, hurt and acceptance. I must remember this for next time. 

I have to internalize this I think because there’s always a next time. There’s always another struggle in life, but I don’t think it comes on in isolation. There are counterbalances, a thick stew of yin and yang forces that play out against each other. Our job is to wait out the unpleasant struggles long enough to see them counterbalanced by other emotional forces. Luckily since the world changes every minute, and nothing stays the same, we can begin to know that both will be present in our lives. The balance has its own challenges to bear, but isn’t it better to know that good forces will play out against the bad forces than to think of things as all bad? Even all good wouldn’t seem right if it lasted all the time.

Journal Prompts to Find Balance in Your Life

I talked about acceptance in the last episode, and I’m returning to that topic in some ways this week. Try to see if you can live with the balance of the yin and yang as you reflect on these questions. You can journal about them, or just think about them this week. Ask yourself: 

In the last few weeks, there have been frantic train rides and worrisome talks with doctors mixed with beautiful fragrant flowers, warm hugs from neighbors and full-on smiles from my mom. There was yin and yang at play, and I felt it all. Now, I try to rest and recuperate from the state of high alert. I try to settle in to enjoy some music, some poetry, and time for pleasurable things that live on the bright side of the beat.🌞

Podcast Music: My thanks to all the musicians who make incredible music and have the courage to put it out into the world. All music for my podcast is sourced and licensed for use via Soundstripe.

Songs in this episode: Hard Legions by Tony Sopiano; Slide by GEMM; MainFrame by Wicked Cinema; Pyaar Kee Seemaen by Cast of Characters

Related Episodes:

#40 Life Among the Tulips: Exploring New Worlds Without My Mom

 #15 Grief & Gratitude (It’s Bittersweet)

#4: Sitting with Shitty Feelings 

#2: Losing My Mother: A Catalyst for Personal Growth

LTVF Season Two Music Playlist: Check out the songs that inspire me, and connect with artists from many genres who add to our collective, human soundtrack.

Check out the resources on this website (and subscribe) to get podcast episodes, poems, articles, music playlists, and journal prompts delivered to your inbox.

Then, connect with me on Instagram. Let me know you hear me out there!

Journaling Resources

30-Day Journal Challenge (Writing Prompts to Get Started)

Here’s a fun & simple 30-day journal challenge for beginners (or those who need inspiration). Use the daily prompts to rediscover yourself.

Let the Verse FlowJill Hodge

Journaling 101: An Inspirational Guide to Start (or Revive) a Practice

Whether you write, doodle, draw, or keep memorable quotes, journaling uncovers YOU. Let your unconscious mind speak, download my free guide.

Let the Verse FlowJill Hodge

Let the Verse Flow is a community-supported, independent publication launched in June 2023 by Jill Hodge. If you subscribe today, you'll get full access to the website and newsletters. Members are vital to building a rich community of diverse voices. Join us by subscribing today; consider a paid subscription to support the community if possible. Thank you!