I’ve spent nights in the mountains where the fire was my only anchor. The wind cut sharp, the dark pressed in, and no matter how close I pulled my sleeping bag around me, the cold stayed. But the flames gave just enough light and warmth to remind me I wasn’t completely undone.
Life feels a lot like that right now. For years, I’ve had a sense that the maps were leading me here. To teach, to coach, to write, and to lead. This transition feels less like a detour and more like the path I was made to walk. Stepping into the classroom, creating new work, guiding others on their own climbs; it all feels aligned with my calling, as though the trail itself is opening before me.
But here’s the tension: the timing hasn’t made it easy. Money is tight. Not “making ends meet” tight, but the kind where you can’t even find the ends. The electric bill is overdue. Medical bills are stacking up. My next paycheck is still weeks away. The weight presses hard, like a pack digging into my shoulders on a steep ascent. Every step forward feels labored, lungs burning, wondering how much farther I can go.
And yet (here is the paradox) at the very same time, I love this work. Each piece of it brings a joy that feels almost sacred. Gratitude and fear, fulfillment and strain, sit side by side. The calling is clear, but the cost is real.
It’s hard to hold both. But maybe the point isn’t to resolve the tension. It’s to learn how to sit close to the fire while still acknowledging the cold night pressing in.
False Summits and Paper Maps
This week, I was handed a decision that felt like a false summit. From a distance, it might have looked like the end of the climb, a judgment made with authority. But standing here on the trail, I know the summit is still ahead. The gap between how the map is drawn and what the terrain really feels like is disorienting.
I remember hiking with my daughter on Mt. Elbert. From below, the ridge looked like the peak. We poured out our energy, lungs on fire, legs trembling, only to crest it and find another slope waiting. It wasn’t the summit, it was a shoulder. A false promise. A misread from afar.
That’s what this moment feels like. What is written in ink isn’t the same as truth. The real story is under my boots, in the sweat and breath and lived terrain that no paper can capture.
False summits can break your spirit if you let them. But if you pause, breathe, and reorient, they can also teach you where resilience is born, not in the celebration at the peak, but in the choice to keep walking when your hope has already been tested.
The Weight and the Worth
That choice shows up for me most in parenting. There are days when the effort to stand up for my children feels like it’s asking more of me than I have left to give. The processes, the paperwork, the constant decisions weigh on my mind, body, and heart. And here’s the paradox: I am not tired of standing for them (I never will be, I will never give up), but I am tired from the effort. The very thing that matters most to me is also what stretches me the furthest.
This, too, is a kind of false summit. The work can feel like the mountain itself, but the true summit is still beyond. What I long for is their joy, their strength, their freedom to stand tall. And so I keep walking, not because it’s easy, but because they are worth every step.
I explored this idea more deeply in The False Summit: How False Accusations and Others’ Expectations Distort the Climb. How appearances can mislead us, and how to keep walking anyway.
The firelight often shows up in small, ordinary moments: holding hands and snuggles on the couch, my son walking across a school hallway to throw his arms around me and boldly and publicly saying “I love you,” the deep conversations that surprise me late at night. These are the embers that keep me walking. Proof that even when the climb is exhausting, the love is steady.
The Ridge of Ambivalence
Psychologists call this emotional ambivalence. The ability to hold seemingly opposite emotions at the same time. Joy and sorrow. Gratitude and grief. Hope and exhaustion.
I’ve wrestled with this before in Between the Ridges: Building Resilience in Ourselves and Our Children, where I reflected on how holding tension, rather than rushing to resolve it actually widens our window of resilience.
Research by Larsen, McGraw, and Cacioppo (2001) suggests that ambivalence isn’t a sign of instability but a marker of maturity. People who can hold contradictory emotions at once report higher resilience and deeper meaning-making. It’s as though our hearts expand when we stop insisting life be one thing or another.
Ambivalence feels like sitting at a campfire in the cold. The flames warm your hands, but the night air still cuts through your jacket. You don’t have to deny the chill to enjoy the fire. You don’t have to pretend the fire makes the night comfortable; it doesn’t. But together, they form the paradox of wholeness.
Carl Jung wrote, “Only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life” (Jung, 1961). To live awake is to let yourself feel the whole weather of your life. Not flattening it into false positivity, nor drowning in despair, but honoring both at once.
Ambivalence doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means your heart is awake enough to notice what’s real.
Keeping the Fire
On a freezing night in the mountains, you can’t wish the cold away. But you can keep the fire. You can gather wood, strike a flame, and tend it through the night creating a steady warmth to hold you until morning.
That’s what resilience looks like. It’s not the absence of cold but the tending of the flame.
Dr. Dan Siegel (2012) calls this the window of tolerance. The emotional zone where we can think, feel, and act effectively. Step outside it, and we spiral into panic or collapse. Stay inside it, and we can breathe, notice, and respond with clarity. Practices that “keep the fire” are what widen that window.
Here are some of mine right now:
- Gratitude practice: naming three things I love about my work each day, so the flame of joy isn’t swallowed by the chill of anxiety (Emmons & McCullough, 2003).
- Micro-movements with money: even when I can’t solve the whole financial storm, I can take one step—call the electric company, set up a payment plan, sell one thing I don’t need. Small steps build agency and self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997).
- Community: letting others share my load, even if it feels vulnerable. Dr. Sue Johnson (2008) reminds us: “We don’t need to fix the storm. We need to hold each other in it.”
- Rest: giving myself permission to stop and breathe, even if the pack is still heavy. Neuroscience shows that rest activates the parasympathetic nervous system, widening our window of tolerance (Porges, 2011).
These practices don’t erase the cold. But they keep the fire alive until morning.
The Paradox of Presence
Here’s the temptation: to think life will get better when. When the paycheck arrives, the storm ends. When the map is re-drawn.
But presence whispers another truth: warmth doesn’t only live in the future. It flickers right here, even on a cold night.
Brené Brown (2012) calls vulnerability “the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity.” Vulnerability isn’t waiting for the storm to pass; it’s choosing to sit close to the fire while the wind still howls.
Presence doesn’t resolve paradox, it honors it. It teaches us to feel fear without losing gratitude, to feel exhaustion without denying joy. It’s the art of sitting by the fire and saying, “The night is cold, but there is still warmth here. Both are true.”
What the Research Says About Walking With Both
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2017) reminds us that emotions aren’t hardwired reflexes; they’re constructed experiences shaped by context and meaning. That means we can reinterpret the cold nights. Seeing them not only as a threat but also as an opportunity for growth.
Dan Siegel (2012) emphasizes co-regulation. Resilience grows when we stay present with others in difficulty. Our calm becomes their anchor, just as theirs becomes ours.
John Gottman (1999) found that couples who handle conflict well by holding space for ambivalence and respecting differing perspectives build stronger, more resilient bonds. If that’s true in marriage, it’s also true in life: when we don’t rush to erase tension, we deepen trust.
The research echoes the trail: resilience isn’t about eliminating the storm or perfecting the fire. It’s about widening our ability to hold both.
Moving Forward
I don’t know when the financial landscape will even out, or how long this false summit will linger on the trail. But I know this: nights don’t last forever. Neither does firelight. Both come and go.
The invitation is not to chase the dawn or cling to the flame, it’s to learn how to live with both. Cold pressing at your back, warmth steady on your hands. Grief and gratitude, side by side.
Maybe this is the truth: wholeness isn’t found in escaping the night or clutching the fire. It’s found in sitting with both, and trusting that even in the longest nights, the trail is still leading somewhere good.
✨ Reflection Prompts for You
- Where in your life right now are you sitting at the fire in the cold night—holding warmth and chill at once?
- What small anchors could you tend (gratitude, community, micro-movements, rest) to keep your flame alive until morning?
- How do you notice when you’ve stepped outside your window of tolerance? What helps you come back inside?
- What “false summits” have you faced recently, and how might you reframe them as part of the climb rather than the end of it?
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