The Things We Keep Frozen

We all carry the things we've kept frozen far too long—old roles, inherited grief, silent burdens. When you're ready to let them thaw, you'll find you're lighter than you ever imagined.

It always seems to happen in the shower.

Maybe it’s the warmth cascading down like a soft veil between worlds, the gentle hum of solitude, or the way steam blurs the edges between body and spirit. In that quiet cocoon, where distractions melt and the mind finally softens, something always rises from the deeper pool of my soul.

A truth. A whisper. A reckoning.

Lately, I’ve been feeling something new—something I almost didn’t recognize at first. A lightness. A quiet bubbling up of my true essence. A soft, luminous feeling of joy breaking the surface after years of soul excavation, shadow work, and aching self-inquiry. It wasn’t loud or performative.

It didn’t shout.

It just glowed.

It felt beautiful.

It felt earned.

Pure unadulterated Joy.

And then… came the guilt.

How could I feel this much joy when the world is in such pain? How could I allow myself happiness when injustice, war, cruelty, and loss are unfolding in real time, across lands and screens and hearts?

This emotional contradiction—this ache—tugged at me like an undertow beneath the waters of joy.

And then between shampooing and conditioning, as the water streamed over me, I remembered an episode I had watched the night before—Kitchen Nightmares with Chef Ramsay. It centered on a man who had spent his life running his family’s Italian pizza restaurant.

Since the age of eight, he had carried the weight of legacy. In the episode, he said something that struck me like a lightning bolt: “I was 8 years old, and I came here not to have lunch—but to serve lunch.” That one line held a universe of sacrifice. He didn’t just give up afternoons of play—he gave up his childhood. And later, as a teen, he left school to keep the business going. He surrendered his dreams, his rest, his peace. Not out of passion—but out of obligation. The kind of obligation that masquerades as love, but slowly erodes the soul. The kind that says, “If I let go, everything will fall apart,” even as you are the one falling apart inside.

The restaurant was crumbling. So was he.

The moment that gutted me was when Chef Ramsay spilled an enormous pile of freezer-burned meatballs and pasta across the kitchen table. It wasn’t just food. It was a reckoning.

Those bags of frozen pasta and meatballs were memory. They were burden. They were decades of unprocessed grief, trauma, resentment, and resistance. Frozen artifacts of a past too painful to thaw, yet too sacred to discard.

And suddenly, I saw it clearly.

We are all carrying things we've kept frozen.

The frozen meatballs were real—but they became something more: a metaphor for the invisible weight we all drag behind us.

The stories we inherited but never questioned. The roles we stepped into before we even knew who we were. The grief and guilt handed down like heirlooms. The traditions that no longer serve, but still demand reverence. The dreams that belong to someone else. The love we gave away too soon—or never learned to receive.

We cling to them not because they nourish us, but because we’re afraid of what life might look like without them. We confuse duty with love. We mistake survival for devotion. We become trapped in a kind of toxic nostalgia, romanticizing the very things that keep us stuck in pain and drain us of joy.

In that steamy silence, as I reached for my towel, I asked myself, what would I say to that man in the kitchen? The words surfaced gently, like a lifeboat for both of us:

"We are allowed to stop carrying the weight of the past without the world collapsing. That healing doesn’t mean we abandon duty—it means we show up differently, not from guilt or survival, but from alignment and authenticity."

And I wept.

Because I saw myself. Because I realized how long I had been carrying emotional frozen leftovers that were never mine. Because I understood that the joy rising inside me wasn’t selfish—it was sacred.

It was a signal that I was finally running differently. Not from pain, but from presence. Not to prove anything, but to become everything I truly am.

I’m still in the midst of learning how to hold both: the ache of the world and the miracle of my own becoming. I’m still practicing how to keep my heart open when it would be easier—safer—to shut it down. But here’s what I now understand deep in my bones:

I don’t have to stay frozen to honor the past.

The past taught me.

The pain shaped me.

But my essence? That’s mine to reclaim.

And I am reclaiming it.

Because I am no longer a fractured container—I am a sacred vessel.  A soul that can hold joy and grief, hope and despair, fire and water. And still stand and beam in sovergnity.

So if you find yourself in your own kitchen of life, staring down your frozen burdens—the stories, expectations, and grief you’ve kept on ice—know this:

When you’re ready, you can put them down.

The world won’t stop.

But you?

You will begin to move differently .

More freely.

More lightly.

More truly.

And perhaps, one day soon, you’ll be in the shower—just like I was—the water pouring over you like grace, and you’ll feel it.

That inner thaw.

That quiet joy.

That soft becoming.

And it will feel like home.

Because you’re allowed to feel joy.

Even now.

Especially now.

Because that’s how we change the world—one thawed heart at a time.