I’ve had sadness in my life. Who among us hasn’t.
Some sadness passes through us like weather… heavy, uncomfortable, but eventually moving on. Other sadness doesn’t leave… either because we cannot shake it, or because the cause for the sadness is ongoing. It settles in quietly, becomes familiar, and over time we learn how to live alongside it. Not everything can be fixed, resolved, or overcome. Some things are simply carried… that’s a truth we don’t talk about enough.
For me, one of the ways I’ve learned to cope is through movies, and series, particularly those that deal with loss, grief, struggle, or deep emotion. It might sound counterintuitive to seek out sadness when you’re already carrying it, but for me, it serves a very real purpose. These stories give my sadness somewhere else to go.
When I watch a film that’s emotionally heavy, I’m allowed to feel. I can sit with sorrow, let tears come if they need to, and experience grief or pain without it being mine in that moment. It’s external, contained, and safe. The emotion has a beginning, a middle, and an end… even if the subject matter doesn’t offer neat closure. In those moments, I’m not suppressing what I feel. I’m releasing it.
There’s something powerful about allowing myself to cry over someone else’s story. It doesn’t diminish my own pain, it gives it air. It reminds you that sadness is human, shared, and survivable, even when it’s persistent. And sometimes, feeling deeply about something external is the only way to access what’s been quietly sitting inside. I don’t watch these films to wallow… I watch them to process.
We’re often encouraged to stay positive, to move on, to “be strong.” But strength isn’t the absence of sadness, strength is finding ways to live with it honestly, without letting it harden or hollow you out. For me, these emotional stories act as a release valve. They help prevent sadness from turning inward and becoming something heavier. They remind me that feeling is not failure.
We all find our own coping mechanisms. Some talk, some write, some walk, some distract, and some feel through art, music, or story. None of these are wrong. What matters is that we give ourselves permission to feel, on our own terms, in our own time.
Sadness doesn’t always need to be solved. Sometimes it just needs to be acknowledged… and given somewhere safe to land.
And for me, sometimes that place is a dark room, a quiet evening, a powerful story, and the simple relief of letting emotion move instead of staying stuck.