Headspace Studio. Hey friends, it's Rosie here.
Welcome to Radio Headspace and to Friday.
A few nights ago, I was sitting on our front porch with Tory, looking at the sky, thinking about everything that's happened.
And I asked him, do you think there's any reason for this?
Any meaning to all of this loss?
And he sat there for a long time before saying, I don't know.
We've spent this week talking about loss, about the shock of it, the grief, the slow process of rebuilding, but today, I want to talk about something that comes much later.
here. The question that lingers after the dust settles, how do we find meaning in whatever we've been through?
After he said that, it really stuck with me.
I began to think how meaning sometimes involves us making a choice.
Meaning isn't something we find, it's something we make, right?
We can go 30 days without food, three days without water, and about 30 seconds before attaching meaning to something.
It's just how we're wired.
We take the broken pieces, the things we never asked for, and we decide what to do with them.
My Alita knew this well.
She'd always tell me, When life breaks you, you decide whether to stay in pieces or to keep moving forward. And, wow, if that isn't the truth.
I think I've always been this way, someone who asks big questions.
Maybe it's because I spent so much time with the neighborhood dias and abuelas growing up in East L .A.
My grandmother was my main caretaker, and she lived a life.
She had this incredible way of weaving her hardest experiences into these stories that somehow always ended with a lesson, a piece of wisdom.
She'd tell me about growing up in Mexico, about raising herself and her siblings, about survival, but she never told those stories with bitterness.
She was made of iron.
Even when she spoke about suffering, she always found a way to make sense of it.
I didn't realize it at the time, but she was teaching me how to find meaning in loss.
She never sugarcoated how hard life could be.
She told it like it was.
And while I'm not sure her approach would make the cut for gentle parenting, I can't deny that they shaped me.
They built my resilience, my perspective, and the way I navigate hardship today.
I think about this a lot with my own grief, not just from losing people, but losing stability, certainty, the plans I thought that were set.
When I lost my job, it wasn't just about the paycheck or the title.
It was about identity, about security.
At the time, it felt like I had failed, like something had been taken from me.
But looking back, I can see how that loss forced me to create something new.
It pushed me to focus on work that actually mattered to me, the work that brought me here, to teaching, to writing, to connecting with all of you.
And that's the thing.
Meaning doesn't erase pain.
It doesn't justify what happened, but it does give it a place to go.
I've shared this story before.
My abuelita used to tell me this old Mexican folktale about el colibri, the hummingbird. The story goes that after a great fire swept through a forest, The animals stood in despair, watching everything they knew burn to the ground.
But the tiny hummingbird refused to just stand there.
It flew back and forth from the river, carrying drops of water in its beak, trying to put out the flames.
The other animals laughing, saying, that's pointless.
You'll never stop the fire with just a few drops.
And the hummingbird simply said, I'm doing what I can.
I think about that story a lot, especially now.
Sometimes we look at our losses our grief, and we think what's the point?
How do I even begin to rebuild?
But maybe, like the hummingbird, we don't have to have all the answers right away.
Maybe we just have to do what we can.
one small, tiny step at a time.
So, dear friends, if you're struggling to find meaning in something hard you've been through, try this.
Ask yourself, What has this experience taught me about myself?
About others? About what truly matters?
Write down what comes up!
Even if the meaning isn't clear yet, trust that it will unfold in time.
Loss will change you, but how it changes you, that part, that's up to you.
And when we choose to look for meaning, we give our pain a purpose.
And if you're looking for some extra guidance, check out The Uncertainty Doesn't Mean Your Powerless Meditation in the app.
That's it for me this week, friends.
Thank you for being here, and thank you for listening.
And if you want to share your thoughts with me, you can find me on Instagram at Rosie Acosta.
I'll see you back here soon.
