It Wasn’t What We Hoped For

I was recently in Logan Airport for an early morning flight. As I was walking to my gate, I heard a woman softly say, “It wasn’t what we hoped for.”

That was it. No context. No follow-up. Just one of those half-overheard phrases that landed like an arrow in my chest.

The Wounded Deer, Frida Kahlo

I don’t know what she meant. A disappointing diagnosis? A relationship that ended? An offer that fell through? It lingered as I waited for my zone to be called, but why? I couldn't stop thinking about it.

Plans unravel. Institutions disappoint. The world feels increasingly heavy. It wasn't what we hoped for.

We go to work. We get an oil change. We make small talk while watching devastation unfold across the world, in real time, on our phones. There’s something deeply surreal about all of this.

Swipe: protest. 

Swipe: food review. 

Swipe: bombs landing on a residential building. 

Swipe: gardening tip. 

But what struck me most about that moment in the airport was the vulnerability of saying those words out loud. That she had someone to confide in.

There’s power in naming what didn’t work out. In being heard. In being met in the moment. No fixing, just being.

Disappointment isn’t weakness. Grief isn’t failure. And sometimes, what didn’t happen becomes its own kind of truth. Because sometimes, quietly and slowly, what didn’t go to plan ends up being exactly what we needed.

Not because it was easy. Not because it was fair. Not because we understood. Not receiving deepened us. It gave us a new shape to grow into. Not receiving asked something of us.

Maybe the invitation is to notice what hurts. To say it out loud and to stay open to the possibility that even the unplanned can hold something more than we could have hoped for.

If you’re open to it… 

Think of a moment in your life when something didn’t turn out the way you hoped.

• What did that experience feel like in real time? What does it feel like looking back on it?

• Who did you trust with that truth, if anyone? Who is someone you trust now to hold that moment with you? (Send that person a text saying you’re thinking of them.)

• Can you see any way that it shaped or changed you? How have you grown from this?

xoxo,

Meghan