I found these photographs recently in a forgotten file on my computer. They were taken four years ago on a film camera by a French acquaintance in a small town in Denmark, where we all slept in sleeping bags on the floor for a week in renovated army barracks and ate pickled fish on rye bread.
I’ve been missing Europe lately. I miss trains and meeting people who speak languages other than English, unexpected conversations and new friends. I knew I felt bummed out and housebound, but I was surprised (and a bit judgemental) to feel a lump in my throat when I mentioned to my therapist that I miss travel, at the depth of feeling that was there.
I have thought often of the people who are far worse off than me, who are struggling to make ends meet and working long hours, who have lost family members to covid. They are the ones that are allowed to feel grief, I was telling myself. Not you.
But feelings don’t like to conform to what we deem reasonable. Sometimes what’s being brought up has much deeper roots, unrelated to what’s going on on the surface. Which is why it is so important to validate those feelings, even if they seem petty and unjustifiable. We don’t need to make ourselves wrong for what’s there.
