You're Allowed to Be Okay and Not Okay at the Same Time

10 August 2026

I'm both a therapist and coach. I help people feel better for a living and I'm currently going through a hard time. Life isn't an either/or.

There's a story we're told, over and over, in different ways. Sometimes it comes from a life coach with a course to sell. Sometimes it's from wellness culture websites, Instagram or well-meaning friends. But underneath it's the same story: that we are either healed or broken. Fixed or falling apart. Fine or failing.

But life isn't binary. It's rarely a case of either/or, and the problem with this thinking is that it assumes there was something wrong with us that we need to fix. The idea that we're broken and can make ourselves better by 'doing the work' or taking the course.

It's true that most of us hope to grow, change and develop throughout our lifetimes. And hopefully we learn and become happier along the way. But life keeps happening, and if we're waiting for success or permanent joy to arrive and stick as the reward for 'doing the work' - if we're waiting to be 'fine' before we rest or enjoy or relax - then that in itself keeps us in this idea of not quite being good enough, yet.

For most of us, something happened, or many things happened, that were simply too much for our system to process at the time. Or we received too little, for too long. Whatever the individual story and circumstances, things happened and there wasn't the support, time, validation or safety to feel it, process it, and integrate. So the story stayed. It settled into the guts, where it shows up as inflammation. It settled in the fascia and the muscles and joints, where it shows up as patterns of tightness, holding or pain that don't have an obvious cause. Or it stayed in the mind, in the beliefs we hold about what is true about ourselves and the world.

We adapted - our bodies and minds did exactly what they are designed to do when there's too much happening and nowhere for it to go. We protected the parts of us that got hurt and found ways to survive and move on.

That's not broken. That's the Nervous System doing its job.

The truth is that there is no "healed" waiting for you on the 'other side' - there's no day when the pain switches off and you finally arrive. Because while we are living, really living, there's joy and there is grief, connection and loneliness, celebration and struggle. They don't take turns. They sit right next to each other, and mostly, that's just what being human feels like.

What we can do is create more capacity to feel what is good and what feeds our joy; we can create more ease and space in our bodies and we can train and rewire the Nervous System so we're living in what's happening now, rather than what happened when we were so small we don't even remember it.

What is the opposite of grief? I genuinely don't know. I'm not sure it has one. And I think that's the whole point - we need to stop thinking in opposites and absolutes, and start thinking in this and that.

This is my summer of both okay and not okay

My dad has dementia. I support him (along with my amazing sister) from a distance, in a different country, and nothing about banks or financial institutions or care is built for families like ours - the practical logistics alone take up so much space before we even get to the emotional weight of it. And underneath the practicalities is an older pattern: the ways I haven't always felt seen by my Dad, even though I know, without question, that he loves me. Honestly, caring for him is time-consuming, mentally exhausting and emotionally complicated.

This Spring, I began to initiate a separation after years of trying, with everything I had, to make my marriage and blended family work. I married a good, kind person. But I carried so much responsibility for making us all succeed, as if success or failure was mine alone to determine. But it wasn't. It was never just me, and sometimes, doing your best isn't enough to change a whole system, because a marriage and a blended family isn't one person's system to change.

So now there's a house on the market that won't sell (yet - I have to keep reminding myself of that); there's been a summer of waiting while nobody's been looking and I've already fallen for a new home that I'm ready to move into. The timing is shocking. It's stressful in the most mundane, grinding way - just waiting, and waiting, for a buyer who isn't coming yet. And the grief is there, like waves.

And then there's an injury. I've mostly been blessed with good health in my life, with a couple of very significant exceptions, but four days ago, I got up from a chair in my clinic and my left hip twinged and I suddenly couldn't put any weight on my leg without excruciating pain. My body was letting me know it needed a break. I had no choice but to get myself home (slowly) and rest in bed, dosed up with anti-inflammatories and arnica, armed with a bag of frozen beans and a hot water bottle! Today I'm back to a mild limp and am writing this in between naps and gentle movement and more frozen beans.

All of this is metaphorically the stormy side of the street (or the drought, depending on which analogy you're living with this summer). It's real, and it's tough, and I'm not going to pretend it isn't happening, or that I have it all handled with a serene, "regulated" face on.

Finding Glimmers

This same summer, there are moments every day where I know I'm okay. I've walked the dog by the lake and on the beach and watched him swim after sticks. Some days I sing along to the radio, some mornings I cry and some mornings I just marvel at the beauty of the world. One morning a couple of weeks ago heard a quiet voice inside me say, "you're okay, it's all going to be okay". And I felt the warm ground under my feet and heard the wind in the trees and knew it was true.

I've been hang gliding above a glorious sunny bay with my son in Cyprus and we swam with sea turtles - a mother and her two babies - in water so clear I could see every movement; these wild, ancient creatures gliding a few metres away from me in the warm sun.

I've sat in a comfortable chair in the sunshine with a good book and a properly cold glass of rosé. And I've talked for hours on the phone with an old friend; the kind where you can go straight to the deep layers of life without any small talk first, and felt so grateful for that ease. I've been kayaking on a lake in the soft evening light, feeling the strength in my body and hearing the gentle splash of the oars.

At work, I watched a client - who came to me a year ago carrying so much shame she couldn't stay in her body - tell me that for the first time in her life, she feels like she's going to be okay; that being in her body felt amazing and that she felt so confident and could feel her own strength. She was shining, open and upright. I had tears in my eyes listening to her. The work isn't finished (she said so herself) but watching her expand like that moved me more than I can put into words.

All of this is true. None of it cancels any of the rest out.

Why I'm telling you this

A long-term client came back from six weeks away and asked how I was. I could have deflected. I've done that plenty of times before, in different contexts. But this time I told her the truth: that I'm going through separation and selling my house and that it's really hard. And I'm also basically okay. Both things, at once.

She thanked me and said it was inspiring to hear that because it helped her feel she could do hard things too, and not feel as though she was failing. She told me it gave her a kind of permission not to be okay sometimes and to let herself feel that; if I could do it, so could she.

I'm not saying I'd share this with every client, in every session. It's not always appropriate or needed. But when I sit across from people every day, moving with them, and guiding them toward more capacity, more safety, more honesty with themselves and more ease, I can't stay stuck in my own life, and I can't pretend it's polished and 'finished' - success and happiness boxes firmly ticked. I can't mentor someone else's unsticking from inside my own stuckness.

So some of this has to become visible.

I want you to feel like it's sometimes okay not to be okay. Not as a consolation prize but as the truth of life and living.

I want you to understand that life isn't binary; it's properly hard sometimes, and things get thrown at us that are stressful and painful and complicated, and sometimes several things get thrown at once. And if we can build a foundation - grow real capacity in the Nervous System - to feel all of it, the difficult and the good, the grief and the joy, without needing either one to cancel the other out, we give ourselves permission to actually live. Not to perform healed. Not to chase joyful. And not to collect evidence of our own failure every time we don't feel calm, content, and in control despite 'doing the work'.

This is exactly the principle underneath Nervous System regulation, properly understood. We need a foundation of support and connection, and sleep, food and movement all matter too. But more than anything, we need to build our ability to notice and experience the fullness of life - the goodness, the pleasure, the simple moments of being 'okay'. Practising this is what turns ease and joy into something familiar rather than fleeting.

And this isn't only about the good moments. This expanded capacity to notice and feel lets us finally feel what was once too much - the things we've been bracing against, or have no cognitive awareness or memory of. This is how the past gets to be felt and integrated, rather than staying stuck in the body as old, predictive patterns waiting to be triggered again.

These good moments can be thought of as glimmers* - my walks by the lake, the turtles, the deep conversation, the rosé in the sunshine. Noticing them, and practising feeling and embodying them, is part of what builds our ability to also feel and navigate what's hard.

I'm using all my own somatic tools right now to experience the good and meet the tough and the impossible and allow myself to feel what I'm feeling and I feel incredibly grateful to have this nervous system language and somatic awareness during this time of transition.

And still - sometimes it's simply okay to be sad. To not have the energy. To think a negative thought and let it be there without immediately needing to fix or replace it. Because that's not instead of the good; it's just what's also true. And if we don't let ourselves feel what we're actually feeling - if we try to push past it and not feel - we end up staying small, staying busy, pushing to succeed or deciding that we've failed, that we're still broken somehow or that we just haven't tried hard enough.

And then every protective part of us rises up with the same tired old story about not being good enough or not being lovable.

I'm not choosing an old story for myself and I don't want it for you, either. Even though it's frightening not knowing how I'll manage financially when living alone and the fear of getting this next chapter wrong for my teenage son, I'm doing what I ask of my clients: I'm taking small, brave steps toward more freedom and connection and building courage as I go.

I've made big changes before and one step at a time is good enough.

This season is teaching me yet again to stay in integrity with what's actually happening in my system, rather than performing something smoother or 'better' for the people around me.

I'm giving myself permission to not be okay, because I am doing some hard things right now.

And also, I'm okay.

Both are true.

---

Find me on Instagram - @fionabodywisdom

For more information about Somatic Experiencing, Trauma-informed coaching and an holistic, integrated approach to healing trauma, visit www.fionalsmith.com. If you're curious about working together, send me a message through my contact form or write to fiona@fionalsmith.com. Your 30 minute clarity call is free.

Start your own somatic journey with the Somatic Stress Toolkit - simple tools for regulating your Nervous System while life continues to happen.

Read more blogs here