Love Sorrow: Welcoming the Guest That Teaches Us to Live

Mary Oliver once wrote in her poem Love Sorrow:

“Love sorrow. She is yours now, and you must take care of what has been given. Brush her hair, help her into her little coat, hold her hand, especially when crossing a street.”

It is not often that we think of sorrow as something to love. More often, we try to run from it, hide it, silence it, or outpace it. We treat sorrow as an intruder in our lives, a thief who has stolen our joy or a shadow we’d rather not face. But Mary Oliver asks us to turn toward it, to care for it as though it were a small child placed in our hands.

In therapy, this invitation to “love sorrow” opens a doorway into healing. It reminds us that pain, though unwelcome, is part of being human. It asks us to consider: What if the very thing we most wish away carries within it the seeds of our transformation?

The Paradox of Welcoming Sorrow

Many of my clients come to therapy with the hope of escaping sorrow that may show up as grief, anxiety, loneliness, or the echoes of old trauma. There’s often a quiet belief that healing means getting rid of pain, finally feeling “normal,” or leaving difficult feelings behind.

But what I’ve learned, and what Mary Oliver captures so tenderly, is that healing is not about erasing sorrow. It’s about making space for it, learning to sit with it, and discovering that sorrow does not destroy us when we hold it with compassion.

In a mindfulness-based somatic approach to therapy, we practice turning toward what hurts with gentleness. We notice where sorrow lives in the body - the heaviness in the chest, the constriction in the throat, the contraction in the belly. Instead of pushing it down, we breathe into it. We stay curious. We ask: What is this feeling asking for? What does it need from me right now?

When sorrow is welcomed in this way, it softens. It reveals layers of memories, longings, truths we’ve been carrying silently. And in that process, something remarkable happens: sorrow becomes not only bearable but deeply humanizing.

Sorrow as a Teacher

Mary Oliver writes of caring for sorrow as you would for a vulnerable child, brushing her hair, holding her hand. This image speaks to the tenderness required in healing. Too often, we criticize ourselves for feeling sad, stuck, or overwhelmed. We say things like:

• “I should be stronger by now.”

• “I shouldn’t let this bother me.”

• “I’m too sensitive.”

These “shoulds” only deepen suffering. What if, instead, we treated our sorrow the way the poem suggests....with patience, kindness, and care? What if we saw sorrow not as a weakness or a problem but as a teacher?

Sorrow teaches us about love. We grieve because we have loved deeply. We ache because something mattered to us. To feel sorrow is to know that our hearts are alive and capable of connection.

Sorrow also teaches us about resilience. When we learn to hold sorrow without drowning in it, we discover an inner strength that no external circumstance can give us. We find that we can survive the crossing the street and emerge with a deeper sense of self.

The Body Remembers, and the Body Heals

In therapy, sorrow often shows itself not just in words but in the body. The nervous system carries the weight of our experiences, and sorrow can live on as tension, fatigue, or restlessness.

Through somatic practices like slowing down the breath, grounding into the present moment, or gently exploring sensations, we learn that sorrow can move through us. It is not static. It does not need to be feared.

Sometimes, in a session, my client will notice tears rising as she places a hand on her heart. Or she’ll feel warmth in her chest as she remembers a moment of connection. These embodied experiences are not small; they are the body’s way of releasing, softening, and integrating sorrow into a fuller story of healing.

Love Sorrow, Love Yourself

To love sorrow is, in many ways, to love ourselves. It is to say: I will not abandon myself when life feels unbearable. I will stay with me.

So often, we learn to care for everyone else while neglecting our own pain. We put sorrow and grief aside to keep going for our families, work, our responsibilities. But unattended sorrow doesn’t disapper... it waits. It shows up as anxiety, depression, irritability, or a sense of emptiness.

Therapy becomes a place where sorrow can be brought into the light, cared for, and honored. Where we can lay down the burden of pretending to be fine and instead discover that being human, with all its sorrows, is not something to fix but something to hold with tenderness.

An Invitation

Mary Oliver’s Love Sorrow is not a command to be happy about suffering. It is an invitation to see sorrow differently: not as an enemy, but as a companion who, when tended to with care, can lead us into deeper aliveness.

If you are carrying pain and sorrow, you don’t have to carry it alone. Therapy offers a space to sit with it gently, to listen for what it wants to say.

Healing begins not when sorrow disappears, but when we stop running from it. When we can meet it with presence, compassion, and curiosity, sorrow becomes less a burden and more a doorway.

And perhaps, as Mary Oliver reminds us, we might even learn to love sorrow... not because it is easy, but because it is real, and because it teaches us how to love ourselves more fully.