Love Can Handle Your Happiness

Our relationship with joy becomes complicated when we’ve had a loss.

When joy finds us (as it inevitably will), it can feel like a betrayal. That first laugh, first vacation, or first celebration after the death of someone you love can come with a heaping dose of guilt.

Those feelings are normal. And yet, I also want to remind you of this: Your love for your person does not require you to suffer, and your happiness is not disloyalty.

Real love does not ask us to prove our love by punishing ourselves (what is true in life is also true in death). 

It’s normal to have feelings of guilt and even betrayal when happiness finds you, but that is different than believing that you don’t deserve good things or pushing away joy.

I love how Megan Devine talks about this in How to Carry What Can’t Be Fixed: A Journal for Grief:

“Happiness in any form cannot, and will not, diminish your love for the one who has died. Love just doesn’t work that way. It is neither fickle nor fragile. It’s not threatened by joy.”

I’m not asking you to pretend that you don’t feel what you feel. I simply want to remind you that those feelings are not the whole story.

If joy finds you this season, invite it in when you can. Love is strong enough to make room for that happiness. 

As always, take gentle care of yourself.

P.S. Related to this topic is the idea of pain vs. suffering in grief (pain is inevitable; suffering is not). If you’re interested in exploring this topic a bit more, I invite you to read more here. I’m sending you a heaping dose of love and care.