Episode #132: When the Small Thing Is Actually All the Things

When the Small Thing Is Actually All the Things

There's a certain kind of upset that doesn't quite make sense on the surface. Where you find yourself more emotional than the moment seems to warrant, and part of you is almost embarrassed by it, like, why does this feel so big?

That was me, sitting down to write a letter to my daughter's school principal about a park day.

Every year my kids have been at their school, the last few days include a trip to the park for lunch. I've always gone, brought lunch, hung out, set up a little pickleball court for whoever wanted to play. It became one of those quiet traditions you don't even realize you're building until you look back and it's just… a thing your family does.

This year, the fifth graders are going for breakfast instead. Then coming back to school for lunch.

And I was upset. More upset than made sense. So I did what I always do when I need to process something — I started writing.

What I realized somewhere in the middle of that letter

As I was writing, other things started coming up. Frustrations from this year. Grief I hadn't fully looked at. Sadness that had been quietly sitting there since kindergarten — since the year my daughter's class didn't get a preschool graduation, or a kindergarten graduation, or Moms and Muffins in the classroom, or 100 Days of School. Since the year they started elementary school on Zoom, distanced from each other and from all of it.

I still haven't fully recovered from what that group missed. And so when this one small scheduling change happened, it became the thing that finally made the pile too heavy.

Here's what I've come to understand: the thing that finally breaks us is almost never actually the thing.

Think about the times your kids have come home and completely fallen apart over something that seems small. It's not because they're being dramatic. It's because they've been carrying things all day — things they can't even fully verbalize — and you are their safe space, and this is the final thing. You're only seeing the tip of the iceberg. Everything else is underneath.

It works the same way for us.

Do you have to hit send?

Once I recognized what was really going on, the letter changed. I edited out the grievance list. I stayed specific. I wrote about what I actually felt, acknowledged that maybe this feels bigger because of the history, and closed with a simple, honest ask. And somewhere in that process, I reached a place where I felt okay — whether I sent it or not.

Which raises a question worth sitting with: do you actually have to send it?

Sometimes writing something is the whole release. Just naming it, getting it out of your body and onto a page — that clarity is real, and it's complete, and you don't always need to take it further.

But sometimes "I don't need to send it" is fear dressed up as peace. Fear of being seen. Fear of being too much. Fear of burdening someone.

So how do you know which one you're in? Ask yourself honestly: do I feel at peace, or do I feel like I'm avoiding? Those are two very different things, and only you know which one is true in the moment.

How to voice something without making it an attack

When you do decide to say the thing — in a letter, a conversation, a text — there's a way to do it that doesn't put the other person on the defensive and doesn't require you to swallow everything either.

What helped me in real time was this: I took out everything that wasn't actionable. I stayed in my own feelings instead of pointing fingers. I tried to keep it honest without weaponizing it or making it someone else's responsibility to fix. More of a — I'm not sure we realize how much this might mean to some people. This would mean a lot. If there's any flexibility, that would be amazing.

Vulnerability without weaponizing. That's the goal.

And I'll be honest — I also had to make peace with the fact that it's actually a little easier for me logistically to not do the park lunch. My day is simpler. And that's true at the same time as it being a loss. Both things get to be real.

The iceberg and the grace we extend to others

Here's where this gets bigger than a letter.

If my reaction to a park breakfast was really carrying five years of accumulated loss underneath it — things nobody else could see — then the same is probably true for the people around me.

The friend who snaps. The family member who cries at something that seems small. The person who just goes quiet. We're only ever seeing the surface. Underneath there might be a whole world of things they haven't named yet, haven't released, things they may not even fully understand themselves.

Extending grace to someone means assuming the iceberg exists even when you can't see it.

And I think this is deeply connected to how we treat ourselves. When we're able to give ourselves grace for our own grief that doesn't make linear sense, for our own reactions that feel bigger than the moment, we naturally extend that to other people. When we're judging ourselves harshly, we tend to judge others that way too. It almost always goes both directions.

So whatever you're carrying as this season wraps up — whatever letter you're sitting on, whatever emotions are surfacing that feel bigger than they should — you're allowed to feel it. You're allowed to name it. You get to decide whether it needs to go further than that.

And when you do speak, you can do it from your own feelings, not from blame or accusation. And sometimes the other person might not be ready to hear it, and you have to let that be enough — because you can't control how someone else receives what you share. You can only control how honestly and gently you offer it.

The park lunch was never just about the park lunch. And that's okay. Sometimes we need one small thing to finally let us feel all the big things we've been quietly holding.