Sadness should be allowed to visit without being handed the deed.

Grief and low periods have a right to be there. They come from loving something, from losing something, from a life with real stakes in it. The danger is not in feeling them but in letting them become the permanent tenant, the frame through which everything is now understood, so that a passing season quietly becomes an identity.

Let sadness stay as long as it needs without giving it authority over what you conclude about your future. Keep the small ordinary structures going, the meals and the walks and the people, not to cheer yourself up but to keep the door open. If it has been settled in for a long time and shows no sign of moving, that is a good reason to let someone else help carry it.