Every Yes Comes with a No: On Gratitude, Grief, and the Lives We Don't Get to Live

A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting with my journal open, looking out of my favorite living room window. I was reflecting on how grateful I am to live where I live. This city I’ve called home for the last 8 years has given me so much… a sense of ease, a slower pace… trees, rivers, lakes, foothills at every corner… a chance for my nervous system to soften and breathe a big sigh after years of living in busier, louder places like NYC and Southern California.

I reflected on how easy every ordinary moment and day feels here… running errands, driving across town, waiting in line at the DMV or the store, deciding on a whim to go for a walk by the river.

And then, almost in the same breath, I noticed something else coming up… a sense of grief for what choosing this life had also asked me to leave behind.

I found myself thinking about my parents getting older and the moments I’d missed with them. I thought about old friends I’d grown up with who I still love very much and only get to make memories with during once-or-twice-a-year visits. I thought about growing up surrounded by so much more cultural diversity than I experience here now and about the little things I didn't realize I'd miss, like walking into a Russian grocery store and right away feeling some familiar part of myself come alive at seeing the familiar foods and hearing the familiar Russian words I’d grown up with.

I sat there for a while, noticing both the feeling of gratitude at how lucky I was to find this place at this phase of my life and also the sadness and grief of what I’d left behind. Both things were very deeply true.

Sitting with the grief, it was also clear to me that I wasn’t necessarily wishing I'd never moved here, and I wasn't questioning whether I'd made the right decision. If anything, I felt more grateful than ever for the life I'd built here. And yet, at the same time, there was also this very real ache… this awareness that one beautiful choice had quietly asked me to let go of another.

I wonder how many of us have experienced some version of this without really putting words to it. Maybe you've felt it after moving somewhere new… or choosing a career you love… or becoming a parent… or deciding not to become one… or ending a relationship you knew wasn't right.

We don't often talk about it because the choice itself may have been exactly the right one at the time. And nevertheless, something inside us still misses what that choice made no longer possible.

The Grief We Don't Talk About

Around the same time as I started having this reflection, I stumbled upon a YouTube video of Chris Paul talking about his basketball career (it didn’t take long for the algorithm to pick up on my love of 90s NBA basketball into today :)). In the video, he wasn't talking about his Olympic gold medals or being an NBA All-Star 12 times. He was talking about birthdays he'd missed, the school events he didn’t get to attend, and the family moments that never happened because he was somewhere else, pursuing something he really loved.

And like me, he wasn't necessarily talking about regret. He was talking about cost. He wasn't wishing he'd chosen differently… In fact, I bet he wouldn’t have given up his NBA career for anything. But he was being honest about what that beautiful choice had asked of him, just like the choice to move and live in a different city had asked of me.

I think we don't talk enough about this kind of grief… not the grief that comes after death or some sort of loss or tragedy, but the less stark grief that comes with almost every meaningful life.

Every Yes Leaves Something Behind

And so, if we really look at it, every wholehearted YES is also an honest NO, and that no is woven into almost every meaningful decision we make. 

Saying yes to one city means saying no to living somewhere else. 

Saying yes to a career means saying no to many hours that might have been spent differently. 

Saying yes to children changes your freedom. 

Saying yes to not having children shapes your sense of family, connection, and lineage. 

Saying yes to marriage means letting go of every other life you might have lived. 

Saying yes to adventure may mean saying no to stability. 

Saying yes to stability may mean saying no to adventure.

And so on.

Choosing one path always means leaving another unexplored. Sometimes we notice that right away, and sometimes we don't notice until years later, but there’s inevitably grief to the big choices we make in our lives. After all, grief doesn't belong only to loss. It also belongs to love, to commitment, to growth, to choosing, and to saying yes wholeheartedly enough that another possible life slowly slips away.

Grief doesn't belong only to loss. It also belongs to love, to commitment, to growth, to choosing, and to saying yes wholeheartedly enough that another possible life slowly slips out of reach.

Holding Gratitude and Grief Together

I remember becoming aware of the grief that started rising up inside of me, and that’s the moment I asked myself “Would I have done it differently?” “Do I wish I’d made a different choice?”

And the answer was a very clear no.

That moment reminded me that grieving what your yes cost doesn't mean your yes was wrong. And instead of being a sign that we made the wrong choice, grief can often just be how our mind very honestly acknowledges what our yes has cost us.

This can be hard to receive. Because we tend to think good decisions shouldn't hurt… that if we’d chosen well, we’d just feel good. But maybe that's not how it really works. Maybe some of our best decisions still carry grief… not because we chose poorly,  but because we chose something that mattered. And maybe both gratitude and grief are the most honest response in moments like that. We can grieve the years we haven't spent closer to our parents… and still be deeply grateful for the life we've built elsewhere. We can love our work...  and still grieve the time it cost us. We can love the life we’ve built and still grieve the life we didn’t. We can still wonder what might have been… without believing that what is somehow isn't enough. We can miss another possible life… without wanting to trade this one away.

We tend to think good decisions shouldn't hurt… But grieving what your yes cost doesn't mean your yes was wrong.

That’s something I keep asking myself when sadness comes… Is this grief symbolic of regret? Or am I okay and maybe even happy with the choice I made? If you’re sad... maybe you made the wrong choice. If  you’re grieving what you left behind, maybe you should go back. Or, what if grief isn't always asking us to reverse course? What if sometimes it's just asking us to honor what mattered… that other life we could’ve imagined ourselves living? Leaving room for both possibilities feels honest to me.

Making Room for Both

So, when we notice grief showing up around one of our life's decisions, instead of just asking, "Did I make the wrong choice?" maybe we can also start asking, "What ‘no’ is asking to be acknowledged today?"

That question has softened something in me... because where our minds often assume that grief is trying to convince us we made the wrong decision and that we must change our lives, our hearts sometimes know something different. Sometimes grief is just asking us to honor what our yes has cost… to make room for all the love, longing, and humanity that came with choosing this one direction or path.

Letting gratitude and grief sit beside each other without them needing to argue over which one gets to be true can be such a relief in times like this. Because I don’t know about you, but I don’t know that we can build a life without trade-offs. I don't think that life exists. But maybe we can stop expecting ourselves to feel only gratitude for the lives we've chosen and let ourselves also mourn the no’s they inevitably carry.

I don’t know that we can build a life without trade-offs.

And so, what if part of living well is allowing gratitude and grief to sit beside one another… loving this life while also mourning the others. It reminds me of something my favorite poet, Andrea Gibson, once wrote: “Everything that you are feeling right now, name it love.” Maybe grief isn't the opposite of gratitude. Maybe, sometimes… it's just another unexpected expression of it.

Of course, sometimes grief is in fact inviting us to reconsider the path we're on and to revisit certain choices. Sometimes the grief we feel is telling us something important has changed… maybe our values changed, our lives changed, and we're called to course-correct, to move, to leave, to begin again. If that’s the case, as many times as we need, we get to ask ourselves, “**Given who I am today… Given what I know now...  Is this still the life I want to keep choosing?**, remembering that we get to make that choice again and again.

But sometimes it isn't asking us to change our lives at all. Sometimes it's just asking us to make room for all the love, longing, and humanity that came with making the choice we did.

If this leaves you wondering about your own life the way it has mine… here are some questions to ponder, journal about, talk about, or just quietly hold.

What "yes" are you deeply grateful for?

And what "no" quietly came with it?

Is there something you've been interpreting as regret that might actually be grief?

Is there another life you've been mourning without ever giving yourself permission to acknowledge it?

I hope you’ll let yourself make room for the gratitude... and the grief today.

P.S. These are also the kinds of reflections and conversations I return to often through my writing, and also my Heart Share Circles, Happy from the Inside Out® course, and my one-on-one work. If you're longing for a place to explore your own inner world with curiosity and compassion, I'd love to welcome you in one of these spaces.