I woke up at 6:12 a.m., like I do most days and checked the weather app before my feet even found my slippers. Metairie humidity had already started its slow climb into what I call soup weather. Beignet, my little rescue mutt, stood by the back door with that patient look dogs have when they are trying to train you.
On our Lafreniere Park loop, I saw the same older couple on the same bench and the same jogger in the same bright shirt. The routine should have soothed me and it did, a little. Still, I felt that familiar tightness in my chest that shows up when my mind starts sorting life into two piles: what I can fix and what I can only feel.
Years ago, when I was a librarian in Jefferson Parish, I could calm almost anything down by finding the right answer fast. A schedule. A phone number. A form. I used to joke that I could locate a book in the East Bank Regional Library with my eyes closed and one hand on my coffee. People would say, “You always know what to do, Elodie.” I treated that like praise and a job description.
These days, my family wants a different kind of knowing from me. Camille, my oldest, wants direct feeling words. Julian talks best when our hands are busy. Sophie sends voice notes from Houston Heights and the sound of her voice makes me want to be honest in a way I used to edit out. And my grandkids, bless them, walk right past my polite scripts and ask what is real.
I used to call my approach “being tough.” I meant reliable. I meant steady. I meant I can handle it. The thing is, “tough” became a drawer I kept stuffing with old disappointments, old worries and old grief, until the drawer started sticking.
Some people get softer with age. Some get sharp around the edges. I have watched both happen in my own orbit and I have felt those two directions tugging at me. Lately, I have been learning to do something simple and surprisingly hard, I let grief have a small place to land. On purpose.
1. The “tough” drawer I kept stuffing
I admit it, I love a good drawer. My kitchen has one full of index cards with recipes, phone numbers and little notes from the days when you wrote everything down because you did not trust a device to remember. For years, I treated my feelings the same way. I slid them into a hidden place and told myself I would file them later.
When Danny and I hit our rough patch after Katrina, I became a list-making machine. Insurance calls. Repairs. Who needed help. What we could afford. He would want a spur-of-the-moment road trip to clear his head and I would want clear monthly numbers so I could breathe. We both thought we were protecting the same life. We were. We just had different tools.
If you grew up with “be helpful” and “do not complain,” you learn a special kind of silence. You learn how to bring a casserole instead of saying, “I miss you.” You learn how to send a “did you eat?” text instead of, “I worry about you.” I did that for so long that it started to feel like my personality, like a permanent setting.
Here is the psychological piece that helped me. Many of us build toughness by practicing control. We control our face, our voice, our schedule and our “fine.” That skill can carry you through parenting, jobs, storms and hard seasons. Over time, that same skill can turn into emotional suppression, the habit of pressing feelings down so quickly you barely notice you did it.
I remember one Saturday at the library, long before retirement, when a woman cried quietly at the circulation desk. Her father had died. I handed her tissues and printed a list of grief support groups and counseling centers. I felt proud of myself for being useful. Later, I sat in my office and stared at my own name badge in the desk drawer and realized I had not actually been with her in that moment. I had solved around her.
These days, when I catch myself reaching for the “tough” drawer, I try to slow down. I hear my own voice in my head saying, “Let me think a minute.” I used to say it to buy time to come up with an answer. Now I say it to make room for a feeling.
2. The moment I noticed my body was keeping receipts
The moment came in a place that feels almost comically ordinary. Dorignac’s, Wednesday morning, pushing the cart past the tomatoes. I was deciding between two jars of sauce and my knee gave that little ache it gets when a storm front is coming. I felt heat rise in my face and my heart did that quick flutter that makes you check your breathing.
Dr. Marcus Bennett, my neighbor friend who is an internist at Ochsner, has a kind way of bringing me back to earth. When I mentioned the flutter, he asked practical questions, then said something like, “Your body keeps patterns, Elodie.” He did not overstep and he did not try to turn me into a project. He simply reminded me that stress leaves footprints.
You probably know this from your own life. You can keep your mouth polite while your shoulders climb up to your ears. You can keep your calendar full while your stomach churns at 3:00 a.m. I do that mental checklist at night when something is wrong and I cannot name it. The house is quiet, WWNO is off and my brain starts reshelving worries like books in the dark.
Psychology and health research talk about stored stress as a real physical experience. When you tense up day after day, your body starts acting like it is always on call. You might feel it as headaches, jaw clenching, chest tightness, or that jumpy feeling you cannot explain. It is your system trying to protect you, even when the threat is old.
One Friday at Cafe du Monde in City Park, my friend Renee Landry, the retired counselor, watched me stir my coffee like I was trying to erase a thought. She said, “You look like you are bracing.” I told her I was fine and she raised an eyebrow like only a counselor can. Then she said, “That is fair. Now tell me what you are carrying.” I laughed and then I surprised myself by tearing up over something small, a grandkid growing fast, a friend moving away, a season ending.
3. What grief looks like when it gets a small, regular place to land
There was a time when I treated grief like a big event with a beginning, middle and end. You cry at the funeral, you send thank-you notes, you get back to work. I had that approach down to an art form. If you asked me how I was, I could give you a clean, efficient summary.
Then retirement came, February 1, 2021 and the silence around my days got wider. I still volunteer at the East Bank Regional Library on Mondays and I still do my grocery run on Wednesdays, but the hours have more air in them. Air is where feelings drift in. I started noticing grief in small forms, grief for older versions of myself, grief for time that moved on without asking me, grief that my kids are adults with their own full lives.
In my house, there is a chair in the living room with a coaster that holds my glasses and the remote. Some afternoons I sit there and catch myself reorganizing my own books by color, even though I know better. That little urge to tidy is my tell. It means a feeling is nearby and I am trying to turn it into a task.
Here is what helped: giving grief a routine. A small one. Grief does not need a dramatic performance to be real. It can be a quiet check-in, like touching the bruise and noticing it is still tender. When you give grief a place, your mind stops having to sneak it into the cracks of your day.
My granddaughter Ava is the notebook kid. She draws everything she notices. One day after a Library Saturday outing, she sketched me and Beignet on a bench and she added little raindrops on the patio cover in the background. “Because you like the sound,” she told me. I did. I also liked that she saw me as a person who pauses, not only a person who manages.
I remember telling Camille, during our Sunday late afternoon family call window, “I do not have a fix. I am here.” My throat tightened when I said it. It felt like stepping onto a porch in the rain without an umbrella. Camille went quiet, then said, “Thank you.” And there it was, grief with a place to land, right between two people who love each other.
4. Why some of us soften with age
My friend Patricia Gomez still meets me at East Bank Regional about once a month “just to browse,” which is a librarian’s version of going to church. We wander the aisles and comment on covers like we are judges at a beauty pageant. One day she said, “Do you ever notice how some people get gentler and some people get mean?” She said it softly, like she was talking about weather.
If you have lived long enough, you have seen both paths. I have watched neighbors turn into sweet elders who chat about tomatoes and grandkids. I have also seen folks turn into walking complaints, like every new thing is a personal insult. I used to tell myself it came down to personality. I have learned a more hopeful view.
As we age, our sense of time changes. You start valuing what feels meaningful. You choose the call you actually want to make. You sit in the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden without a plan or a timer and feel your shoulders drop. You start noticing that a peaceful afternoon counts as a real accomplishment.
Psychology describes this shift as a change in priorities. People often lean toward experiences and relationships that feel emotionally rich. That can create softness, because you stop saving all your tenderness for “someday.” You use it now. And when you practice that, you become someone who knows how to hold a moment instead of controlling it.
Of course, if grief and disappointment have been shoved into that old tough drawer for decades, aging can also bring those feelings closer to the surface. That can feel scary. It can make a person snappish. Your nervous system gets tired of carrying everything alone. I see that now and it makes me more compassionate, even when someone is difficult. I think, “That body is tired.”
5. My two-minute practice for processing what I miss
I used to think “processing” meant a long talk with perfect words. That idea kept me stuck, because I like perfect words and I can chase them for hours. I spent decades in a job where words mattered. When you are raised to be useful, you can treat feelings like a report you need to polish.
Now I have a two-minute practice that fits into real life. I do it after my morning coffee. Sometimes I do it in the car before I walk into a store. Sometimes I do it sitting on the edge of my bed when I wake up at 3:00 a.m. and my mind starts that old checklist routine.
Step one, I name what I miss in one plain sentence. “I miss when the kids lived closer.” “I miss my mother.” “I miss my younger knees.” I keep it simple because my brain loves to turn sadness into a speech. Step two, I put my hand on my chest or my belly, wherever the feeling sits and I breathe slowly five times.
Step three, I ask a small question: “What would care look like today?” Care might mean texting Sophie back with a voice note instead of a polished message. Care might mean letting Danny joke when he is tense and letting myself smile instead of getting rigid. Care might mean walking the Lake Pontchartrain levee path near the Bonnabel Boat Launch and watching the water, no errands attached.
I’ll be honest, the practice felt silly at first. Then one day it kept me from snapping at Danny over something minor, the kind of small irritation that is really a bigger feeling in a cheap costume. I heard myself say, “I hear you,” and I meant it. That was new. That was grief getting handled in a way my body could understand.
6. How I talk to my kids without fixing the feeling
Camille and I have a pattern. She tells me something hard and I reach for logistics. “Do you want me to bring food?” “Did you call the doctor?” “What day is the meeting?” These are loving questions. They are also my reflex, like snapping a dog leash clip without looking.
One Sunday, during our usual call window, Camille said she felt lonely in Mid-City even though she had people around her. My first urge was to suggest clubs, yoga, volunteer work and a better calendar. Instead, I tried something Renee taught me years ago. I repeated the feeling in my own words, then I paused. “That sounds heavy,” I said. “That sounds like you have been carrying it quietly.”
Silence can feel like failure when you are a fixer. Julian, my son in Baton Rouge, has always helped me practice silence. Our best talks happen while we do tasks side-by-side, like moving a planter or checking a tire. He will say something real in the middle of a simple job and if I jump in too fast, the moment closes. So I have learned to stay steady. To let the thought finish itself.
Here is what seems to work and you can try it too. Start with presence, then move to help. Presence sounds like, “I’m with you.” It sounds like, “That is fair.” It sounds like, “Tell me more.” Then, if the person wants it, help can come in, like a casserole sliding into the oven at the right time.
Sophie makes this easier because she sends voice notes and photos. She will show me Marco, her toddler, doing something chaotic with perfect timing, like dumping blocks right as she tries to speak. When I listen, I can hear her tiredness under the joke. So I send a voice note back, plain and warm. “You are doing a good job,” I tell her. “I’m proud of you.” I used to fear saying the wrong thing. Now I fear missing the chance to say the right thing out loud.
Danny hears these calls sometimes and teases me, gently. “Look at you, using your feeling words,” he says. I roll my eyes because I am still me. Then I squeeze his hand and think, quietly, listen without fixing. It counts. It matters.
7. The gentler version of me, built from tiny repetitions
I remember when I thought gentleness was a mood. Either you woke up patient, or you didn’t. These days, gentleness feels more like a skill. It shows up because I practice it in tiny ways and the practice has a rhythm, like the same loop at Lafreniere Park.
Some of it is physical. I drink water before I drink my second cup of coffee. I stretch my knee before I take stairs. I try to notice when my shoulders climb. When I catch myself bracing, I unclench my jaw and exhale. It sounds small. It changes the whole day.
Some of it is relational. I let Danny pick a restaurant once in a while without making it a budget summit. He lets me have my buffer without calling me boring. We still have our old tension, planning versus spontaneity, but we have more kindness around it. We both want the same thing, a life that feels steady and alive.
Last month, I took Lucie, my careful and observant granddaughter, on a Library Saturday. She asked one of her exacting follow-up questions, the kind that makes you realize she is listening with her whole face. “Maw-Maw,” she said, “do you ever feel sad for no reason?” I told her, “Sometimes I feel sad because I loved something. Love leaves marks.” She nodded like she was filing it somewhere safe.
On the drive home, I passed the same Veterans Memorial Boulevard loop I take when I am restless. I used to use that drive to avoid sitting still. That afternoon, I did something new. I went home, sat in my chair by the lamp and let the quiet be quiet. The house held me. The day kept moving. And I wondered, gently, what would happen if more of us treated tenderness like a daily habit.
Note from Cottonwood Psychology:
At Cottonwood Psychology, we let real authors share their real-life stories and struggles and we explain how these psychological concepts affect us in daily life.
- As we age, many people shift toward what feels meaningful and emotionally close. Laura L. Carstensen, PhD, describes this as a pattern where “emotionally meaningful goals are prioritized over exploration.” You can see this in Elodie’s story when quiet time, family calls and small moments of connection start to matter more than proving competence. Source
- Grief often has a wider range of outcomes than people expect, including steady functioning and resilience. Researchers Anthony D. Mancini and George A. Bonanno note that “most people manage this extremely stressful experience with minimal to no impact on their daily functioning.” This supports the idea that “gentler aging” can include learning to make room for grief in small, consistent ways, rather than expecting grief to erase your ability to live your life. Source
- Holding feelings in can create body-level strain in the moment, especially when it becomes a repeated habit. James J. Gross and Robert W. Levenson found effects of hiding feelings, “including increased sympathetic activation of the cardiovascular system.” In everyday terms, this can show up as tension, a racing heart, tight shoulders, or a “bracing” feeling, even when you look calm on the outside. Source
- Stress can add up over time in a way the body remembers, which helps explain Elodie’s “body keeping receipts” insight. Bruce S. McEwen described how repeated stress responses can “produce a wear and tear on the body that has been termed ‘allostatic load’.” A short daily practice, like Elodie’s two-minute check-in, can support recovery because it interrupts chronic bracing and invites the nervous system to settle. Source
- “Processing grief” often works best when it becomes specific and doable. Elodie’s practice uses three parts that many therapists recognize as helpful: naming the emotion plainly, noticing where it lives in the body and choosing one small act of care for the day. This approach also supports better conversations, because you can show up with steadier presence and less urgency to fix everyone’s feelings at once. Source