Two Lines, One Call

A Day When Hope and Fear Collided

I wrote this piece on the evening of June 24, 2025, a day that felt like a pure distillation of Hard Joy: the highs, the lows, the need to hold all of it at once. Since I was a young child, writing has been my way of making meaning, and sure enough, these words flew out of my fingers that night to help me hold the hope, dread, fear, and excitement that had taken hold of me.

Since then, so much has unfolded. My mom has completed treatment, moved, and is now slowly healing. I’m in my third trimester, growing bigger and bigger. That summer day feels both far away and so close. Versions of this have resurfaced in similar ways over these last several months; the same undercurrent of both/and in daily life.

It feels like the right moment to finally put this out there.

Today has been a rollercoaster of emotional whiplash in real time.

This morning, I was wide awake by 5:41 a.m. - before the alarm, before the toddler stirred, before my husband started waking up. I just had a feeling. We’ve been hoping for a second child. We had a miscarriage last winter and only recently started trying again. It’s only the second month I could have conceived, but something in me thought, and hoped, that this might be it.

So I slipped into the bathroom and took a test. Minutes later, I checked with the magnifier on my phone and double-, triple-, quadruple-checked. Clear enough, even for me to see: two lines.

Positive pregnancy test indicated by two lines

I nudged my husband awake. We whispered our excitement. We celebrated, cautiously. We snuggled. We let ourselves imagine the wild possibility of having another kid half as amazing as our first.

And then, the day resumed.

We got dressed. We got the toddler dressed. We did the teeth-brushing song (and battle). We ate breakfast and packed lunch. We loaded bags and coffees and bodies into the car. I started my workday a little dazed. But when I sat down with my patients, I dropped into their worlds: it’s what we do. Still, every now and then a wave of nausea rolled in or my belly gave a gurgle; a private reminder that something had changed.

At 12:59 p.m., wrapping up a lunchtime meeting, I saw my mom was calling. I had one minute before my next patient. I hesitated, then figured I could at least see why she was calling.

Green icon representing incoming call

“I have cancer.”

She said it like the words had to escape before she lost her nerve. “It’s the bad kind,” she added. No meeting with the oncologist yet. Not many answers. Her voice wobbled, slurred from emotion or alcohol or both. A lump formed in my throat, mirroring the one in hers that had just been biopsied. I offered the rote validation I’m so practiced at giving. And still, I had to wrap up. My 1 p.m. had already arrived.

I ended the call, clicked into my telehealth platform, smiled, and began the session.

This is the job. Therapists are supposed to be steady. Focused. Attuned. We move from one hour to the next regardless of what came before. But today, holding space for someone else while my own mind was racing felt… surreal. Compartmentalizing is an ironic coping skill in this line of work. I spend so much time teaching my patients to notice their emotions and connect with their bodies. And yet sometimes the only way to function is to set everything aside. We keep going. And I wanted to be there for my patients.

The rest of the day was a blur. I made it through my sessions. I completed documentation. And then I sat there for a minute, stunned by the almost comical choreography of it all.

What do we do when life delivers what feels like beginnings and endings within a single day? When we’re holding joy in one hand and devastation in the other? When we brim with excitement and dread, hope and fear, all at once?

I don’t have answers, only the reminder that this is what Hard Joy means to me. It’s this day, in all its uncertainty, contradiction, and overwhelming both/and.