The Sacred Practice of Both/And: Embracing Dualities and Living with Paradox

Weaving Grief
4 hours ago
6 min read

Life is rarely simple, and it refuses to be neatly divided into categories of good or bad, light or dark, joy or sorrow. Instead, we live in a world shaped by paradox—where opposites coexist, overlap, and often arrive in the same breath. To walk through life, especially when touched by grief, is to learn the practice of holding space for both/and.

Life is filled with contradictions. We long for certainty, yet life continually presents us with paradox: beginnings wrapped inside endings, joy woven with sorrow, presence shaped by absence. Many of us are taught to think in black-and-white, yet the truth of being human is far more complex.

This is where the practice of both/and becomes essential. Instead of forcing ourselves to choose between joy or grief, love or loss, light or dark, we can learn to hold them together. This practice of embracing dualities and paradox offers a path to wholeness, resilience, depth, and expansion of our human experience.

This practice is not about intellectual agreement. It is an embodied way of living, one that honours the complexity of our human experience and refuses to collapse into tidy conclusions. It's hard, but its whole.

In this post, we’ll explore:

What dualities and paradox mean in everyday life.
Why grief initiates us into paradox.
The cultural pressures that make us resist complexity.
Practical ways to cultivate both/and in daily living.
How embracing paradox leads to greater healing and aliveness.

What are Dualities?

Dualities are the natural pairing of experiences that shape our existence, light and dark, morning and night, expansion and contraction, birth and death. They are often taught or seem as opposite, but in reality, they are inseperable, and interconnected. One cannot exist without the other.

Nature is so helpful for helping us understanding the experience of this

The daytime naturally gives way to nighttime
Seasons cycle through growth, harvest, death, and rest
As forest fires destroy, they also create conditions for regeneration.

When we enmbrace dualities, we recognize that opposites do not cancel each other out (like our mind wants us to believe), but rather they complete each other, and make our experience more whole.

The Meaning of Paradox

A paradox is when two seemingly opposite, or contradictory truths exist at the same time. Paradox is not about confusion, but rather it asks us to expand, and to hold more, all at the same time.

We may experience this when:

We feel deep sorrow, while also have the experience of laughing at a cherished memory
We feel deep heartache, and deep gratitude simultaneously
Experiencing relief and heartbreak after a reationship ends
Feeling both broken and whole at the same time

The beauty of paradox asks us to step beyond either/or thinking, and into a more nuanced and dynamic way of being. Instead of asking, "is it this or that?", we being to live in the possibility that it is both, this and that.

Grief: The Teacher of Paradox

Grief was my initiator into living with paradox. It teaches us so many things, such as:

Love and loss are two sides of the same experience.
We can be deeply devastated and simultaneously deeply grateful.
Absence can deepen our presence to and within life.
Death and loss, can break us open into a greater capacity for love.

When we are griveing, people often urge us to "move on", "stay positive", or to "look at the bright side". But grief resists being neatly tucked into a box, or similified in this way. It is wild, alive, and untamed, and it insists that we feel the heaviness, the depth, the magnitude, and the beauty of both despair and wonder.

Learning to be with grief, is learning to live fully, and to live fully invites us into holding paradox. It is one of the deepest initiations into both/and living, and I believe it expands our humanness and our ability to exprience the full range of our aliveness.

Beyond Grief, Paradoxes In Everyday Life

We don't have to wait for monumental loss to practice this. Everyday life is full of paradox:

Parenthood can being both joy and exhaustion
Creative work is both exciting and incredibly vulnerable
Transitions hold both endings and beginnings

By practicing both/and in small ways, we begin to build the capacity to meet lifes bigger paradoxes with more grace.

Why We Resist Holding Both

Our culture at large, values clairty, productivity, and certainty. We are taught to avoid confrontation and to fix discomfort as quickly and smoothly as possible. This creates resistance to paradoxical both/and thinking.

Some reasons we resist include:

Fear of contradiction: We're told that contradictions mean weakness or confusion, or that we aren't fully choosing where we stand.
Cultural pressure: The narratives around how things "should be" reinforce either/or thinking.
Desire for control and certainty: If only one truth exists, life feels similer, organized, and easier to manage. The thought it that there is less to hold, and outcomes should be guaranteed.

But the cost of resisting paradox is fragmentation. We cut ourselves off from the full sepctrum of the human experience.

Why Both/And

There is healing power in both/and. When we learn to hold paradox, we exprience a new kind of freedom. Both/and living allows us to:

Feel whole, instead of denying parts of our experience, we integrate them.
Deepen resilience, we become capacble of holding joy and grief together, without needing to resolve one.
Expand compassion. Recognizing complexity in ourselves, also helps us honour it in others.
Live truthfully. Both/and honours life as it actually is.. messy, layered, confusing, and sacred.

Wholeness doesn't come from simplifying life into binaries. Wholness comes from weaving contradictions together.

Practices for Embracing Dualities and Paradox

Here are a few tangible practices to begin holding more, and living with both/and:

01. Name It

When you notice opposing feelings, name them outloud or in writing:

I feel both grief and gratitude
I am grieving and I am hopeful

Naming our experiences helps to normalize, externalize and helps our systems hold space for complexity and nuance.

02. Anchor into the Body

Holding two truths often overwhelms the mind because it doesn't neatly fit into our systems of organization. Place a hand on your heart, belly, or throat. Breathe into the sensations and ask your body: What do you know about holding opposites? Let its wisdom guide you forward.

03. Ritualize the Duality

Ritual reminds us that opposites can coexist. Hold space for both. Light two candles, one for the grief you are feeling, and one for the gratitude. Watch how both blames burn together.

04. Journal with Paradox Prompts

Where in my life am I experiecning, or being asked to hold, both/and?
How does expriencing grief, expand and deepen my capacity to love?
What does holding paradox teach me about being alive and about being human?

05. Allow Yourself to be Witnessed

Share your experiences with someone who can listen without fixing. Being held in your complexities softens the edges of tension.

Expanding Deeper, The Spiritual Dimension of Paradox

Across spiritual traditions, paradox is revered as a doorway into mystery. Mystics often speak of being "broken open", of finding freedom in surrender, of expanding capacity to hold more, such as holding both joy and sorrow together.

Life is not meant to be "solved", or neatly categorized, its messy, ocmplex, nuanced, and dynamic. Our lives are meant to be lived, explored, embraced, and held with reverence.

Our Invitation into Living as Whole Beings

To embrace paradox is to live as a whole being, it is to expand into our aliveness. Instead of trying to "figure it out" or "move past", we allow life to shape us in its fullness. This is not easy work, it takes courage to hold sorrow and beauty in the same breath. But it is also expansion, liberating, and freeing. We don't have to choose one or the other, or force ourselves into a box. Holding and honouring both/and allows us to be human in the truest sense — complex, messy, tender, alive.

So next time you find yourself being torn between conflicting feelings, may you take a sacred pause, breathe deeply, and whisper to yourself: it all belongs.

May we soften the grip of perfection, deepen our resileince, expand our capacity, and discover the sacred power of paradox and our aliveness.

About Us:

Weaving Grief specializes in compassionate grief therapy for individuals navigating loss of any kind - death, breakups, relationship transitions, chronic illness, loss of self, and more. By addressing these profound experiences, Weaving Grief empowers clients to grieve freely and live fully. Through somatic practices and meaningful reflection, we’re here to help you navigate these tender moments and rediscover the fullness of life.

Specific areas of focus: death of a loved one (recent or past), life changing transitions, relationship transitions and break ups, pregnancy loss, grief around family planning, chronic illness, loss of Self, and supporting entrepreneurs through the grief that comes with growth.

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In this blog post: Discover how to embrace paradox and dualities through the practice of both/and. Learn to hold space for joy and grief, light and dark, endings and beginnings.