Expressing Joy When You're Grieving - Have You Felt This Same Fear?

When my partner Brian died - I began living with an ongoing fear. Let me know if you've ever felt this one too...

It was a specific fear that increased as time went on:

That if I didn’t continue (and continue & continue) reminding people how hard this is - they would forget.

That if I allowed myself to shine bright and for my joy to show on the good days, that they would promptly check me off their list and breathe a sigh of relief that I was all “better.” ✅

This continually felt so frustrating for me, because I knew that this thinking didn’t serve me and that I deserved the right to lean into the good & feel happiness.

Any sort of true joy was really hard for me, for a very long time. 

And so, when it did actually start to authentically return - all I wanted was to grab it and hold it and squeeze every last drop out of it.

But then there was this fear…always there in the back of my mind.

The hardest part was that this fear was actually based in reality. In other words, as I began to show my joy, it absolutely came true.

I still desperately needed support - and a lot of people did actually assume I was fine when I showed them my moments of happiness. 

As I expressed my joy openly, me being a widow became "normal" for everyone else, while it all remained completely unbelievable & seemingly impossible for me to even comprehend.

I dream of building a world where our communities know right from the start that our grieving process won’t really “make sense” in the linear way that they expect. 

I wish & pray for a day when grievers can allow our laughter & joy to shine through with wild abandon (in what are perhaps only fleeting moments where we have access to these feelings at all) - trusting that our people will still be there to catch us the next morning when we are inevitably struggling again to even see a point. 

It’s human nature for the people around us to want us to be okay, to cherry pick the moments when we’re even a bit happy & hope this pesky grief has finally come to an end. 

And the burden does usually fall on us, to educate them on the chaotic up & down & all around nature of grief. 

For me, this process did become easier - slowly & with so much patience, the fear of showing my joy began to gently fade…& my capacity to explain the ups & downs grew. 

And also, I just know how exhausting (and maybe even impossible) it feels to articulate this to your people, when everything has fallen apart and you’re sitting in the centre of a giant crater that used to be your life, barely remembering the first year of grief…and then looking around & seeing that everyone else has returned to their beautifully intact lives. 

The very last thing we need as grievers, is ANYTHING that makes happiness even harder to reconnect to than it already is. 

And so, here I am, dreaming of a world where grievers can authentically smile & crack wide open with gratitude & joy in specific (maybe uber rare) moments where this feels real, without fear that our grief will be forgotten. Maybe the first step, is writing it all here. 🤍

ps: This is one of my favourite things about leading all-widow retreats every year. Because everything I've written here is just so known. For once, there is no grief-education required. We can flow between laughter & tears with ease. We can feel such deep peace in one moment and express feelings of heartbroken uncertainty in the next. We all arrive with the same understanding - that grief is not linear. And this gives us the freedom to lean into joy.  

Surrounded by nature, eating delicious food, & moving through our grief together, forming lifelong friendships along the way…

Our 2026 dates are are September 24-27 in beautiful Prince Edward County, Ontario. There are a few spots remaining. Click HERE.