Holding Two Truths as Women
December has a way of slowing us down. After months of rushing between work, family, responsibilities and festivals, the final days of the year invite us to pause. And in that pause, two emotions often rise quietly to the surface: gratitude for what this year gave us, and grief for what it didn’t.
For many women, this emotional duality is a lived truth rather than a contradiction. We can be proud of how far we have come while still mourning the things we lost along the way. We can hold joy in one hand and longing in the other. We can be grateful and grieving at the same time.
The Complexity of Women’s Emotional Worlds
A year is never just a linear journey from beginning to end. It is a tapestry woven with responsibilities, shifting identities, and emotions that rarely have a place to rest. Our emotional words are layered because our lives are layered. We carry multiple roles at once: daughter, friend, partner, caregiver, professional, student, mentor and emotional anchor. And even when we step into a new space, to another country, to a new job, to a new relationship, those inherited emotional expectations often travel with us.
In the Nepali context, this complexity deepens. Many of us grew up in homes where women balanced everything with unspoken grace. Our mothers cooked for guests while hiding their own tiredness. Our sisters pretended to be “fine” even when their hearts were breaking. Our grandmothers held entire families together while carrying personal stories that were never told aloud. These early impressions become emotional blueprints we unconsciously replicate. So, it is not surprising that the end of the year feels emotionally dense for many women.
The year-end pause brings back memories, unprocessed emotions, unfinished conversations, and unacknowledged victories. Gratitude rises but so does grief. Hope appears but so does the sting of what could not be. And instead of choosing between them, women often feel both deeply, in ways that words cannot fully capture. This is the emotional complexity we rarely name but collectively live.
When Gratitude Turns Into Pressure
Gratitude is beautiful, but gratitude that demands silence can feel suffocating. Sometimes, when we share our struggles, the response is:
“At least you have a job.”
“At least you are strong.”
“At least things are okay.”
These “at least” statement unintentionally dismiss our pain. They push us to shrink our emotional world into something more palatable, more socially acceptable. Many women tell me they feel guilty for feeling grief, especially if, from the outside, their lives look “fine.” But emotional wellbeing isn’t measured by appearances. And gratitude doesn’t cancel our grief.
The Grief We Don’t Name
Grief isn’t limited to losing someone. It can be the dream we quietly let go of; the friendship that faded without a goodbye; the version of ourselves we no longer recognize; the year that looked so different from what we had hoped; the familiar home we left for studies or work abroad; the loneliness that comes even when surrounded by others. This grief grows more complex for women navigating migration, distance from family, or roles that expand faster than the emotional space to hold them. Many women tell me that December feels like a mirror, softly revealing both the tender wins and the quiet losses that went unnamed all year.
Two Truths Can Coexist
Dialectical thinking, the ability to hold two seemingly opposite emotions at the same time, is a key part of emotional maturity. One can be grateful and disappointed, hopeful and scared, proud and tired. When we allow these truths to co-exist, we soften the internal tension. Instead of forcing ourselves into premature positivity, we embrace emotional flexibility, the ability to feel deeply without being overwhelmed.
How We Make Space for Both Gratitude and Grief
Name the feelings without judging them
Ask yourself: What am I grateful for? and What am I grieving this year?
Let the answers exit side by side.
Create rituals of release
Write down what you want to let go of; guilt, fear, a harsh self-story, and gently release it. Burn it, tear it, toss it. Let your body feel the closure.
Celebrate the quiet wins
Not every victory is visible. Sometimes the win is that you kept going. That you rested. That you asked for help. That you healed in ways no one saw.
Acknowledge what hurt
Sometimes the most compassionate thing we can do is give our grief a name, instead of shaming ourselves for feeling it.
Allow joy without pressure
Joy doesn’t have to be grand. It can be a warm cup of tea, a message from a friend, a slow evening where no one needs anything from you.
Closing the Year with Honesty, Not Perfection
As we arrive at the last page of the year, we don’t need to pretend the story was all beautiful or all painful. It was both. Most years are.
Women have long been taught to compress their experiences into neat narratives. But maybe this year, we can end with something truer: a heart that holds gratitude without denying grief, and grief without erasing gratitude.
Because emotional well-being doesn’t demand that we choose one emotion rather it invites us to honor all of them. And that is how we begin a new year; not with forced positivity but with honest presence.
–Dr Bhawana Shrestha
Bhawana Shrestha is currently a Research Fellow at the Academy of Future Education, Xian Jiaotong- Liverpool University, China, where she specialises in social-emotional learning, education, and well-being. She is also the Co-founder of My Emotions Matter, an initiative that focuses on emotional intelligence across different life stages.
