Broken Hearts Still Have Room for Wonder

The oncology waiting room in 2016 was all beige walls, fluorescent lights, and hushed voices. My husband and I sat holding hands, drowning in the kind of silence that feels like it might swallow you whole. The days stretched endlessly - heavy, quiet, sometimes unbearable. We weren't parents yet. We had nothing but time to sit with our fear. 

Fast forward to this past year: tiny feet thundering down the hallway at 6AM and toddlers announcing that breakfast needed to happen NOW. Same disease. Same fear. But everything else has changed.

Little feet at 6AM have taught us something I never expected: grief and joy don't take turns - they dance together.

The Beautiful Chaos of Hard Things

The second cancer journey is harder in all the obvious ways. Exhaustion hits like a truck when you've been up with a sick kid the night before your husband's chemo appointment. There's no luxury of quiet processing when someone needs a snack, a story, and urgent help finding the other sock.

But here's what surprised me: it's also easier.

Our kids have become our teachers in the art of living fully, even when life is breaking your heart. They don't separate sadness from play. They cry about a scraped knee, then immediately chase a butterfly. They feel everything, then move on to the next moment.

Ground-Level Wisdom

Kids see everything we've trained ourselves to miss. They notice:

• The way morning light cuts through our kitchen window, creating rainbows
• How the grocery store music is absolutely perfect for spontaneous spinning
• That Tuesday is worth celebrating simply because it follows Monday

This isn't about forced positivity or pretending everything's fine. It's about expanding our capacity to notice life happening alongside the hard stuff.

Lessons from the Chaos

I'm learning to follow their lead, even when it feels impossible:

When my daughter announced a kitchen dance party mid-dishes last week, I almost said no. The dishes were piled high, my mind was spinning, and dancing felt frivolous. But something in her expectant face stopped me. I turned up the music. We spun around the kitchen island until we were dizzy and laughing. The dishes waited. But for five minutes, joy won.

When my son insisted we chase the bunny that had appeared in our front yard, I felt the pull to say "later" and finish checking my endless to-do list. Instead, we ran barefoot down the street, following a cottontail that led us on a ridiculous adventure through three neighbors' yards. By the time we came home, breathless and grass-stained, something had loosened in my chest.

The lesson keeps repeating itself: there's always something hard happening. But there's always something worth noticing too.

Your Turn to See

This week, try borrowing their lens. Look around like a four-year-old:

• Notice one thing you usually ignore - the way clouds move, the sound your coffee maker makes, the feeling of warm socks from the dryer
• Let it matter, even for a minute
• When something small catches your attention, stop. Really stop.

You might be surprised at what sneaks in when you're paying attention to the ground level instead of just the horizon.

What's the last small thing a child noticed that made you stop in your tracks? I'm learning those moments aren't interruptions from the important stuff - they are the important stuff.

The dance between grief and joy doesn't have steps you can learn ahead of time. But kids? They're natural choreographers. Maybe it's time we let them lead.