life really is that simple

There is pain. And there is love.

Last week, my family received news that my grandpa would be placed on hospice care. A medication he had been relying on began to fail, which led to an emergency hospital visit to drain fluid from his lungs.

News like this arrives in waves. First, there’s the shock: it feels sudden, surreal. Then comes the recognition: he’s 90 years old, and his health has been slowly declining for years.

Knowing I’d be spending the next several months out of the country, I booked a last-minute flight to Arizona, as I knew this would likely be my last chance to see him. I savored slow, tender moments with him—my only grandpa, as my paternal grandfather passed away before I was born.

As I watched him nap peacefully in his worn recliner chair, I was reminded of something that’s been quietly unfolding in my mind for some time.

Life is simple: there is pain and there is love.

That’s it. Life in its most honest form. A newborn knows these two shades the moment they arrive in the world, instinctively, before language, before memory. To them, that’s all there is. They cry when they’re hurting and soften when held. They don’t question the validity of their pain. And they recognize love not through words, but through warmth, presence, and touch—trusting without needing proof.

Sitting with my grandpa reminded me that we exit the world the way we enter it, and in the end, we all return to those original truths.

Death has a way of stripping away everything else. The distractions, the obligations, the roles we play—all of it falls away. What’s left are the things we felt before we even had words: pain, love, need. When we’re near the end, we don’t crave accomplishments or certainty or control. We want presence. Connection. A hand to hold.

I think being so close to death broke something open in me. Or maybe it returned me to something I’d been avoiding. I saw how little time we have to live open-hearted. How easily we miss the moments that matter, trying to be invulnerable, trying to be in control.

This realization gave context to the personal journey I’ve been exploring the past few months, a journey I’ve felt deeply called to but couldn’t quite name. In a season of excavation, growth, and rebirth, I’ve been learning how to sit with pain without numbing it. And how to receive love without shrinking from it.

I came into the world knowing how to do both, but somewhere along the way, I forgot. I complicated things. I began mistrusting comfort. Distracting from pain. Constantly scanning for signs of danger and looking for proof, patterns, and exit signs.

I don’t think I am alone in this. It seems to me like life teaches us to ignore and often repress pain and love. To keep them tidy, hidden.

We’re told not to cry— at least not too much. Not in public. Not at work. Not in front of him or her. Not if you want to be taken seriously. At what point do we learn to mask with an “I’m fine”? We learn that the world claps for strength, not softness.

And love? This becomes a performance. There are rules and strategy. We learn that being “too much” means being unloveable. That love is something we must earn rather than receive. That you only get it if you’re “good”. So we edit ourselves. Make our feelings more digestible.

We suppress pain. We guard love. No one teaches us how to stay with our raw, real emotions—without numbing them, without explaining them away, without self-protection.

And that’s heartbreaking. We start to doubt and dull the two purest things we come into the world knowing.

Unlearning these patterns is messy. I find myself flinching when someone offers care, and I have to fight the urge to swallow my tears. But I don’t want to wait until I’m meeting death to return to our early instincts. I want to live from them now. While I still can. So I’ve been seeking rebirth, asking myself:

What if the crying baby has it right?
What if love was never supposed to be a negotiation?
What if pain isn’t a weakness, just a signal that we need something?

What if the whole point of living is really this simple: We are wired to need. We are worthy of love just as we are.

It’s scary to live like an infant again, but in this next season I want to be brave enough to try. To begin again. To cry when it hurts. To soften when I’m loved. And to let the world hold me, even when it feels terrifying.

walk boldly,

Caroline