Grace lives in the space between the feeling and the story.

There is an important distinction between feelings and emotions — though we often use the words interchangeably. We experience a wide range of feelings every day.

Research suggests the physiological surge of a feeling lasts roughly 45 to 90 seconds — unless we continue fueling it with our thoughts.

The initial wave is brief. What extends it is the story we attach to it. It is entirely natural to move from one internal state to another within minutes.

Rapid shifts in feelings are part of normal regulation — not evidence that something is wrong with us.

Imagine this. A colleague says something at work that stings more than you expected. You feel the tightness in your chest.

A few minutes later, someone else walks into your office, glowing with excitement. Before you know it, you are laughing together. The heaviness lifts. Later that evening, you walk through your front door and discover water pooling on the bathroom floor from a leaking sink. Just like that, your mood shifts again.

This is the rhythm of being human.

We move from irritation to joy to frustration — sometimes all in a single day.

Feelings rise, crest, and fall. They are not permanent states. They are passing experiences. Like thoughts, they drift through the mind. Like clouds, they gather and dissolve. Like traffic, they move in and out of view.

They visit. They inform. And then they move on. The mistake is believing they define us.

Emotions, on the other hand, tend to carry more weight. They are not simply the initial feeling.

They are the meaning we assign to it — the narrative we construct about what happened, rather than what objectively occurred.

Left unchecked, we embellish those stories. We replay them. Expand them. Stretch them far beyond the original moment. A single comment becomes a sweeping judgment. A small disappointment turns into a larger conclusion about our worth or our future.

If there were a clear road to happiness, it would not be feelings that create the bumps — it would be the stories layered on top of them.

Not because emotions are wrong. But because when interpretation takes over, it can jolt us off balance.

The feeling itself is brief. The story is what lingers.

Often, emotions begin innocently enough — as simple, honest feelings.

But then we add meaning.

“I love you” is a feeling — steady, present, capable of deepening over time.

It can grow quietly, strengthened by choice and consistency.

“I can’t live without you” is something else entirely.

It is a narrative layered on top of that feeling. It shifts from connection to dependency. From affection to fear.

And the more we repeat that story, the more convincing it becomes.

Feelings connect us. Stories can entangle us. This is how someone can remain angry for decades over a moment that lasted only minutes. The original event happened long ago.

The person who hurt us may not even be in our lives anymore.

And yet, if we continue to replay the scene — turning it over in our minds, revisiting it in our bodies — we keep the experience alive.

Each time we rehearse the story, we reactivate the emotion. The body does not always know the difference between what is happening now and what is being vividly remembered. So the anger resurfaces. The wound feels fresh.

Over time, it can feel permanent — as though the emotion defines us.

But what we are often holding is not the present reality. It is a memory of pain.

Pain leaves scars.

Scars remind us where we have been. They do not have to determine where we are going.

Healing begins when we stop reliving the story and gently loosen our grip on it.