This year, as I enjoyed the cozyness of Thanksgiving, surrounded by my favorite people, a quiet ache thrummed in the background of my happiness. It was a presence I could feel before I could name it.
Although my mind was on cooking and preparing the day, my body somehow realized that this year Thanksgiving Day had fallen on the anniversary of my cousin Mark’s sudden and unexpected death years ago. Layered onto that memory is the loss of his sister, Noor, just last year. Along with the deep gratitude I was feeling, was the pain of those enormous losses.
Throughout the day, as I felt deep appreciation for the usual sounds of family — clinking dishes, laughter in the next room, the wonderful chaos of being together — I kept thinking of my aunt and uncle.
Two parents who have buried two children.
Two losses that reshaped the landscape of our family.
Two absences that still ripple through every moment of connection.
I felt gratitude for the time we had with Mark and Noor— the ways they shaped our family, the stories we still tell, the threads of them that remain woven into all of us.
And right alongside that gratitude, I felt grief — deep, chest-heavy sorrow — for all the moments we don’t get to have. I miss them, intensely. And, alongside that pain, their lives and their losses amplify the joy and gratitude I feel for the life I get to live.
Both feelings are real. Both belong. And, as contradictory as they may sound, they often show up together as complimentary companions, especially around anniversaries, rituals, and holidays.
While we like to simplify things to make life feel more manageable, this complexity of emotion is central to being human. In clinical speak we call this emotional dualism — the capacity to hold two contradictory emotional truths at the same time. Gratitude and grief. Love and loss. Warmth and ache.
Not one canceling out the other, but both shaping our inner experience.
Emotional dualism can be exhausting, it can be confusing, but it is a sign of integration. Our ability to recognize, hold, and process “all the feels” is essential to our wellness, to our feeling whole.
This is how we metabolize the complex realities of being alive.
What We Can Learn About Dualism From The Ancient Egyptians
When we look closely at ancient Egyptian culture, a striking truth emerges: they didn’t just accept emotional dualism — they built their entire worldview around it. Their texts, rituals, festivals, daily practices, and myths all reveal a civilization that understood life as a constant dance between loss and renewal, grief and gratitude, ending and beginning.
We see this first in their funerary texts, like The Book of the Dead. Despite the title, these writings weren’t about death in the modern sense. They were guidebooks for transformation — instructions for passing into a different state of existence. They describe life and death not as opposites but as a continuum, where mourning and celebration sit side by side, and where the dead remain present, “transfigured,” in the lives of the living. In their eyes, a person didn’t disappear; they shifted form.
Their agricultural calendars and rituals around the annual inundation of the Nile echo the same belief. Every year, Egyptians celebrated the flooding of the river, even as it destroyed homes and fields, because it brought the nutrient-rich silt that ensured next season’s crops. Loss created life. Destruction led to renewal. Every harvest festival was an embodied acknowledgment of this dual truth.
This perspective wasn’t reserved for priests or royalty — it lived inside ordinary households. Archaeological digs show that Egyptians kept small shrines where they placed offerings of bread, fruit, beer, and oils. These offerings honored both abundance and absence: gratitude for what they had, and remembrance of what (or who) had been lost. Daily devotion became a quiet practice of emotional integration.
Even their tomb and temple inscriptions reflect this worldview. Carved just a few feet apart, scenes of workers joyfully harvesting grain appear alongside scenes of mourning and lamentation. For Egyptians, death was not an interruption of life — it was woven directly into its fabric.
Their worldview was never either/or.
It was always both/and.
And we see this dualism reflected in their rituals and myths:
🌾 The “Beautiful Feast of the Valley” — Celebrating Life With the Dead
During this beloved festival, families traveled to necropolises, picnicked outside the tombs of ancestors, and brought flowers, bread, and beer. They mourned and celebrated in the same breath. This ritual held the truth that grief and connection are inseparable — that love continues even as life changes form.
🌾 Harvest Season Offerings — Gratitude and Grief Together
At the close of the agricultural year, Egyptians offered both the first and the last sheaves of grain.
The first represented gratitude.
The last represented grief.
In honoring both, they ritualized endings with the same reverence as beginnings.
🌾 The Myth of Osiris — Death as Fertility
Their most central myth is a story of dualism itself: Osiris dies, is dismembered, and his body fertilizes the land, giving rise to new life. Isis grieves him deeply while also celebrating the abundance born from his sacrifice. In this myth, loss fuels growth. Grief strengthens gratitude. Death becomes part of the cycle of renewal rather than its opposite.
🌾 Daily Life — Grief Woven Into Routine
In everyday households, Egyptians lit lamps as symbols of light within darkness, burned incense to send prayers upward, spoke the names of deceased loved ones to keep them present, and wore amulets representing both protection and vulnerability.
Even their word for “heart” (ib) held duality: it was the seat of emotion, morality, and memory — the place where joy and sorrow coexisted. They believed the heart recorded both blessings and burdens, without dividing them.
🌾 The “Opening of the Mouth” Ritual — Restoring Two Worlds
This ritual symbolically returned breath and speech to the deceased so they could participate in both realms — the living and the dead. It honored grief for the lost physical form while celebrating the continuing relationship. It was, in essence, a ceremonial enactment of emotional dualism.
🌑 Why This Matters for Us Today
Ancient Egyptians didn’t shy away from complexity. They expected feelings to contradict each other. They designed rituals that made space for both gratitude and grief, both joy and loss, because they understood that love always carries the risk of pain — and that the presence of one does not erase the other.
Their wisdom mirrors what modern neuroscience now confirms:
- Grief is evidence of connection.
- Gratitude doesn’t eliminate pain.
- Emotional integration — holding two truths at once — is how the nervous system heals.
This ancient wisdom aligns beautifully with modern neuroscience and memory research — confirming that emotional dualism isn’t a psychological glitch.
It’s an evolutionary design.
🧠 Modern Neuroscience Catches Up
If you’ve ever sat down to write in a gratitude journal and suddenly found yourself overwhelmed with a memory you haven’t thought about in years — a person you miss, a season of life that slipped away, a loss you never fully tended — you’ve experienced your nervous system working to integrate the losses with the gifts.
Today’s research on emotional processing and neuroplasticity shows us how normal this really- through modern science we now understand that gratitude and grief are literally wired to travel together.
Here’s how it works behind the scenes:
When you pause to notice something good — a warm mug, a safe moment, someone you love — your parasympathetic nervous system switches on. Your heart rate eases. Your breath deepens. Your brain finally decides: We’re safe.
And in safety, something surprising happens.
The brain releases feelings it once stored away for protection. Not to overwhelm you — but because the system finally has the capacity to process them. This is why gratitude can suddenly bring up tears, memories, or an ache you didn’t expect.
Gratitude lowers the guard, and your deeper emotions walk through.
From a neurological standpoint, grief becomes digestible only when the nervous system is calm. Not in panic, not in shutdown. Gratitude creates the physiological conditions for grief to be held without drowning in it. In this state, grief becomes softer, more organized, more connected to love than to pain. It doesn’t disappear — it rearranges itself.
And when gratitude and grief arise together, the brain begins reconsolidation — the process of updating old emotional memories with new information. Warmth meets ache. Safety meets pain. Love meets loss. This duality allows the brain to revise the emotional “files” it created long ago. You’re not reliving the past; you’re rewriting your relationship to it.
This is the truth the Egyptians built entire rituals around:
What feels like contradiction is actually integration.
What feels like overwhelm is your brain making meaning.
What feels like “too much” is emotional growth — new wiring forming in real time.
Gratitude doesn’t erase grief, and grief doesn’t cancel gratitude.
Together, they create the emotional alchemy that heals.
🌿 “Two Sides, One Heart” — A Bilateral Gratitude & Grief Practice
This practice combines movement, touch, and mindfulness to help the nervous system integrate difficult emotions while honoring both gratitude and grief.
1️⃣ Ground Your Body
Sit or stand comfortably. Feet flat, shoulders relaxed.
Notice how your body feels right now — tense, heavy, light, or expansive.
This somatic awareness primes your nervous system to receive emotion safely.
2️⃣ Bilateral Stimulation
Gently tap your knees alternately, left then right, for 30–60 seconds.
Or, if lying down, tap your shoulders alternately.
Bilateral stimulation — the same technique used in EMDR therapy — encourages neural integration, helping the brain process layered emotions.
As you tap: think of one thing you’re grateful for. Feel the warmth and ease it brings.
3️⃣ Introduce Grief
Now, without stopping the bilateral movement, bring to mind a loss, disappointment, or ache.
Notice what happens in your body as grief rises. Perhaps tightness, heaviness, or fluttering.
Keep the tapping rhythm. This stabilizes the nervous system while holding the emotion.
4️⃣ Name Both Truths Aloud or Silently
- Gratitude: “I am thankful for ___.”
- Grief: “I am feeling ___.”
Speaking or silently acknowledging both emotions engages the prefrontal cortex and helps integrate limbic activation.
5️⃣ Close With Somatic (Body-Based) Integration
Put your hands together and rub them vigorously to warm them up. Lower your hands to your heart or belly, feeling their warmth and the body’s natural rhythm.
Take 3–5 slow, deep breaths.
Imagine gratitude and grief meeting in your chest — not canceling, not overwhelming — just coexisting. Breathing in, visualize the gratitude, breathing out release the grief.
Why It Works
This practice is designed to help your brain, heart, and body hold the messy, beautiful duality of being human.
- Bilateral stimulation promotes neural communication across hemispheres, aiding emotional integration.
- Somatic awareness keeps the nervous system regulated.
- Holding gratitude and grief together allows reconsolidation of emotional memory, softening the edges of pain and strengthening connection to love.
Let both truths sit beside each other without fixing either one. That dualism is integration, it is healing. And it invites you to embrace the full spectrum of being human and all the complexity this adventure brings.
TL;DR — The Harvest Within
- Thanksgiving resurfaced memories of loss held in my body.
- Gratitude for the lives and grief for the absences of those I have lost showed up together, a form of emotional dualism that is painful, confusing, and deeply human.
- Ancient Egyptian rituals honored this coexistence of sorrow and abundance, the dualism of being human.
- Neuroscience now shows that holding both emotions supports emotional integration and healing.
Ground, tap alternating sides of your body, and name both what you’re harvesting and what you’re releasing.
___________________
Begin Within
and align with the rhythm of nature and self.
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