What is the world trying to tell me? Robert Frost is popping into my scroll today. Maybe the algorithm is saying, hey you, yeah you, you are not going to ignore feelings. And I’m just – I can’t. But that f&*(er is being persistent, and he is all about deep diving into the ethos of existence.
It’s true that sadness is upon me – not I am sad or I’m feeling sad. I am not my emotions. I love the Gaelic way of saying that a feeling is upon me because it more accurately describes my experience. Tá brón orm. Simply, concisely, sadness is upon ME. That brings up an image of being covered in a thick wool blanket that I can’t see the light of day through, but that I will eventually cast off. If I am an emotion, I can never get rid of it. It is who I am as a being. But while I’m under it I know that it is a lens that will pass. Frost employed a blanket of snow to symbolize this. I’m not ready for a snowy evening. The desolate winter does give way to the rebirth of spring.
Frost reminds me of a Currier & Ives scene from my distant childhood memories in my escapes in the neighborhood library. He was heavy with bucolic metaphors that appealed when I was young and now the depths resonate in mid-life. Maybe I should pull his works from my personal shelves and reread. Is it time to consider my own roads not taken? I feel like I’ve done that enough and I’m pretty happy in my life even though sadness is upon me.
Frost is gentle. Maybe that’s what I need right now. He also knew a lot about grief and resilience which he expressed into hauntingly beautiful words.
Robert Frost wasn’t the warm grandfather we imagine when we think of snowy woods and quiet roads.
He was a man who lost almost everything — and somehow kept writing anyway. Four children buried.
A wife he adored gone too soon. A son lost to despair. And a life that taught him early that the world does not promise safety.
He grew up poor, anxious, and brilliant. He was a boy who read by candlelight. Meanwhile, his father drank himself to death before Robert turned twelve. By twenty, he had buried his first child. By his thirties, he was a failed teacher, failed farmer, failed editor… and a desperate writer with nowhere left to go.
So he gambled everything. He sold the family farm and moved his wife and children to England — an incautious leap that became the turning point of his life. He took the leap of faith that so many dream about. I have imagined chucking it all for a small cottage in the countryside myself. How about you?
He settled in a tiny cottage near Beaconsfield in the UK. That’s where the American Frost finally found his voice. He wrote the poems that would make him immortal — Mending Wall, Birches, Home Burial, and the seeds of the verses generations would memorize from that tiny cottage.
People saw pastoral calm. But inside the lines were razor blades — grief, exhaustion, loneliness, choices that left bruises, and the quiet ache of trying to carry on.
Loss followed him for decades. His daughter Marjorie died after childbirth. His wife Elinor passed away, leaving him shattered. His son took his own life, and Frost found him. One tragedy after another… yet he kept writing, not to escape pain but to survive it.
That’s why “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” feels peaceful at first — until you realize Frost was writing about the temptation to give up, and the courage it takes to keep going.
Robert Frost wasn’t soft. He was steel wrapped in snow, like my imagined wool blanket. A man who carried unbearable grief and somehow turned it into lanterns we still hold when life gets dark. Tá brón orm. Big emotions were upon him, but he was not his emotions.
His poems remain because they’re not about nature — they’re about us.
Our crossroads.
Our fences.
Our promises.
Our long walks through nights that feel endless.
Our decision to take one more step when we’re not sure we can.
Some stories don’t just teach us — they walk beside us when the woods get dark. Yes, it’s time for me to revisit Robert Frost.
#InspiringLives #HistoryStories #LiteraryLegends #ResilienceAndHope
Sources:
Poetry Foundation
Biography
One of my newer saved favorites from YouTube that embodies this:
Hauntingly beautiful.
#SadnessIsUponMe #NotMyEmotions #TáBrónOrm #EmotionalResilience #DeepFeelings #ExistentialReflections #BlanketOfSnow #RobertFrost #PoeticResilience #MendingWall #StoppingByWoods #Birches #HomeBurial #LiteraryDepth #PastoralAndProfound #RoadsNotTaken #CrossroadsOfLife #ResilienceAndHope #GriefAndGrowth #LanternsInTheDark #WinterToSpring #CourageToContinue #CurrierAndIves #ChildhoodLibrary #WoolBlanketMetaphor #SteelWrappedInSnow #HauntinglyBeautiful
Our Humble Road 
Whoa – “I am not my emotions” and “sadness is upon me”. That is like a lightbulb moment for me. Sometimes I wonder what the Universe is trying to tell me as I read your post.
Robert Frost – the road less traveled. I think that is the poem that set me on a love for poetry.
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Right!?! It was so incredibly interesting that he hit my scroll multiple times. It was a message to stop and take a look. I originally read him as a child and had no clue to the depths of what he was telling us. And it was just months before that I stumbled onto the phrase “sadness is upon me,” around the time Ozzy died. It’s a fundamental shift from we are our feelings. It’s freeing. I had had to shut down my feelings to get through treatment and just focus on the next thing in front of me so that I wasn’t devastated / locked up with fear and anxiety that comes with a cancer diagnosis. I think the phrase speaks to the inate resilience that the Irish have.
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