What We Keep in the Box

Sacred Compartmentalising: An Emotional Skill for Holding Grief, Love and Longing

I was having a conversation recently with one of my former university students. We found ourselves speaking about immigration — not in abstract or political terms, but in the everyday, lived choices that this process entail. The following is a reflection on our conversation, but for me, this can be applied to any intense (usually overwhelming) emotional experience.

We came for our children. For our sons. For the possibilities we could see might be available to them: freedom, safety, opportunity, room to grow into themselves. And in doing so, we made another choice — one we rarely speak about.

Our parents are growing older. Their bodies slower, their needs changing. And we carry, quietly in our hearts, the longing to be there — not just to visit, but to take care of them. To be actively part of their care team. To sit in the ordinary moments that make up daily life.

But it isn’t possible.

We cannot go for long stretches and then return without undoing everything we have built. The life we knew is not waiting for us there anymore. Careers cannot simply be reignited. Identities cannot be resumed.

So we stay.

And in staying, we learn an emotional skill that is rarely named and often misunderstood.

Some experiences are simply too large to live inside daily. So we compartmentalise — not in a dismissive or avoidant way, but in a careful, almost reverent way. We differentiate. We fold the feelings gently and place them in a box.

This is what I think of as sacred compartmentalising.

We cover the box with a beautiful cloth, woven from love and sorrow and heartache and gratitude. Gratitude for beautiful parents. For a childhood and adulthood filled with memories that still live in the body.

The feelings are not denied. They are not numbed. They are not forgotten.

They are held.

We had to choose. We chose to move. And in doing so, we chose to let go of a certain way of being present.

There is a particular grief in letting go from a distance. Hands (ruthlessly) releasing hands across oceans. Parents slowly slipping behind the veil while we remain here — functional, grounded, building a life that must continue. From this distance, we live with longing and restraint. With love that has nowhere immediate to land.

And then we look at our children.

We see how free they are. How much becomes possible for them. How they are able to move toward their potential and take up opportunities without the same weight of constraint.

And we understand, again, why we stay.

Sacred compartmentalising allows us to keep living without severing our hearts. It is not about closing down emotion, but about choosing when and how it is touched.

Some feelings are not meant to be opened every day.

Some things stay in a box — wrapped carefully, covered with a cloth, tied with a beautiful ribbon.

Not because they do not matter.But because they matter too much.