Saudade: Saying Goodbye
This week, a very dear friend of mine moved from California to Iowa to be closer to her family. She had called California home for 30 years and had been a near-daily presence in my life for the past 10 years. It’s truly the right move for her, and I couldn’t be happier for her. Still, I find myself missing her deeply. As I often do in these moments, I took time to explore what I was feeling because the emotions were more complex than I usually experience. Yes, I felt sad, happy, grateful, disappointed, worried, anxious, and confused - all at once, each one full and real in its own way, but none of them truly captured the feeling.
Thank goodness we have such rich linguistic diversity in our world, each offering unique ways to express nuanced emotions that English sometimes can't quite capture. I first noticed this when I read Brené Brown’s book “Atlas of the Heart.” She beautifully maps out 87 emotions and experiences, including a few from other languages, that shape the human journey. Brown points out that simply naming these accurate emotional experiences doesn’t always make them easier or give them more strength, but it certainly helps us understand ourselves and each other better.
And so I found saudade. Saudade is a Portuguese word that many say can’t be fully translated into English, but this is my take on it. Saudade is a longing, a missing of something you loved deeply, but is no longer present in the same way, not because of tragedy, but simply because life keeps moving forward. The bond remains, love stays, and memories endure, even though their form may change. It’s often intertwined with feelings of nostalgia and acceptance, making it a poignant reflection of life's natural flow.
This perfectly captures this moment for me and brought back a vivid memory from my youth. When I finished high school, many of my friends were heading off to college. We enjoyed that summer together, but as it drew to a close, one by one, friends left for their new journeys. The last three of us stayed behind because our schools operated on the quarter system and started later than others. We felt a deep emotion that was hard to put into words. What I now understand is that we were feeling saudade.
As many graduations are among us right now, you may know some kiddos who are about to experience this very thing. Whether they are headed off to college, to find a job, to travel, or to continue working, this is a time when many people embark on new adventures. This can absolutely be met with joy and excitement, but helping our young people name that it can also hold grief, sadness, heartache - that it can be saudade - may help them understand the mix of emotions. The truth of feelings is that they are rarely singular. Emotional experiences are often not black and white, but all shades of grey.
May we all be so lucky in our lives to experience saudade, because it means we have loved something so much that it hurts when it changes, yet we have the power to hold on to it if we accept its new form.