I have spent more hours thinking about how to answer *this one question* than I have about almost anything else in my adult life

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For years, I’ve been asked one question in a hundred different ways, but it’s always some version of this:

“After all that happened, how are you still such a…joyful/happy/positive person?”

Can I be honest?

I kinda fucking hate this question! 😂

Not because it isn’t a fair one, but because the answer is SO incredibly nuanced.

Yet, the more I share about my life, the more it follows me! (I get it, I have built an online platform as someone who very obviously centers joy in my life! It can feel a little jarring to hear about all the messy stuff that was going on under the surface.)

But it also makes me feel like there was a page of the “how to act when your dad goes to prison” handbook I didn’t read. Or a chapter of, “the correct way to grieve your dead parent” 101 I must’ve skipped over?!

I got it from friends, family, and lots of people on the internet after I published this post and this post. (I’ll link them below)

I saw it in the way my friends looked at me apprehensively when I explained my dad had received his prison sentence.

Or when he passed, and I apparently didn’t spend the expected amount of time curled up in bed, locked away from the world.

I clocked the skepticism under the comments like, “but REALLY–it’s okay to not be okay” reminders.

I knew they mistook my changing the subject for avoidance when they asked, “I know you don’t like to talk about it but how’s your dad?”

How the hell was I supposed to answer? “Oh well he’s still in jail but he just won 5 packets of tuna in a poker game (not cans, PACKETS–much higher currency you know!) so… he’s riding high!!”

Or “well he can’t really talk anymore and we’re not sure how much is still there mentally since he can’t really speak but hey man, he’s living the fucking dream!”

?????

Perhaps the weirdest part of living through a very long, difficult experience, was the part I didn’t see coming:

Living through everyone else's expectations of what my experience was supposed to look like.

Like I was failing their expectations of “girl who is grieving.”

Like my determination to keep living life through the shitshow, and not get trapped in the undertow of it all, was, somehow, me denying it was happening.

When in reality, LIVING was the thing that kept me afloat.

So, naturally, a question I started to become obsessed with, living through that period of my life, and watching other people’s reactions to it–was this:

What IS it that allows us to keep LIVING, rather than feeling trapped by circumstances we can't control?

I didn’t have the answer, but finding it was something I became obsessively curious about.

At this point, as I sit at this coffee shop, writing this essay–I have now spent years thinking (and researching) about why humans do (and feel!) what we do.

At any given time my nightstand houses a rotating collection of [overdue 🙃] library books about psychology, meditation, spirituality, happiness, neuroscience, intuition–not just because they are nerdy interests–but because I'm trying to answer that one question that will NOT leave me alone!! Because I find it fucking FASCINATING.

(Which is kind of funny, because not only have I never written about this...I don't think I've ever actually said it out loud to anyone. My best friends and even Neal are probably reading this thinking, "Wait...what? You've literally never mentioned this in your life." 😂

I think I sometimes underestimate just how much of my life happens in my own head!!)

Every time I'd hear someone's story, I'd find myself wondering:

What happened there? What can I learn from this?

What contributes to someone being able to access joy and participate in life through the pain–big or small? What contributes to someone becoming consumed by it?

On one hand, I had a guess, again, solely from my own life–what my mom modeled for me through our own shit storm.

She’d spent most of my childhood teaching me that while we can’t choose our circumstances, we can choose how we respond to them.

Eventually, though, after years of people I loved looking at me with that subtle questioning, sad look in their eyes–I started to waver a little…are they seeing something I can’t? Am I doing something wrong?

I braced for her response as the words apprehensively tumbled out of my mouth.

But what she said next was something I didn’t expect.

She didn’t think I was avoiding my grief. She thought I had been doing something very different, actually.

She reminded me about when my Granny died, the summer I turned 14.

It had been sudden and devastating. “Dissection of the aorta”–I had no idea what that meant at the time, but I remember the phrase standing out as my mom broke the news to me on the phone.

My Granny was one of the most cherished women in everyone’s life (especially mine) and for many in our family, it was our first experience with tragic loss.

In the memory that stands out most, it’s a gorgeous day–and we’re all standing in the woods, about to scatter her ashes outside my mom’s childhood home in Eugene, Oregon.

My aunts, uncles, parents, my (very pregnant) sister, my grandpa, my cousins. (me, the youngest of everyone, by at least a decade). We’d just buried a “capsule” of special things that reminded us of my Granny–a project I had spearheaded, that had occupied a lot of hours during that stretch of time.

She reminded me of how immersed in the moment I was throughout that whole weekend.

I’d never heard it through her eyes before, but now, when I think back on that time we were all gathered there, I realize now it was my first valuable lesson in grief: how to flow in, out, and through it, rather than getting caught in it.

There were no guidelines or standards assigned that weekend. No requirements for how to act, think, feel, speak, dress–nothing. The only point was that we were all there together, and we were feeling whatever we were feeling at a given time.

This meant in the middle of discussing her obituary with a local reporter, it was fully okay to break down sobbing, or not. Just as it was okay to make a joke in the same breath. Both were equally neutral.

It was okay (encouraged, even!) to smile and laugh and celebrate and feel moments of joy.

It was okay to look like death frozen over and it was also okay to put on your cheeriest outfit and put on a full face of makeup.

It was encouraged to need to be alone and it was also encouraged to ask for a hug.

We each focused on our own individual contributions to the collective group effort. Not in a hyper-functioning suppressing emotion type of way–but in a fully present, participating in the moment way.

While my mom, aunts, and uncle dealt with the inevitable logistics, the cousins each came up with their own ways to get involved. Some went to the flower store, some handled the shopping. I threw myself into curating things to bury in the “Granny capsule” and sifting through old photos to shrink down for my locket.

And I remember how everyone hesitated when it was time to reach in the box of ashes, for each of us to scatter–so I took a deep breath and dipped my hand in first.

I’m paraphrasing her words here, but Lorie described that weekend as something like:

“When you’re in it...you’re IN it.” You don’t spend your energy pretending it isn’t happening or wishing it weren’t. You let yourself actually be where you are and feel what you feel, and allow your emotions to flow through you–and it’s what allows you to keep moving.”

She went on to share a metaphor with me:

Imagine life as a roller coaster.

Most of the time, you can’t choose the ride, you can’t control how long you’re on it, and you’re not going to get anywhere by fighting it, resisting it, trying to get off of it, or begging it to stop. That’s futile, and it’s going to make for a pretty tough ride. Your best bet is to just hold on, be present in the moment–ride all ups and downs, take it as it comes, and know that it'll be over when it’s over–but it won’t last forever.

…Huh.

Well THAT definitely wasn’t the response I was expecting! (But I’d be lying if I didn’t breathe a huge sigh of relief. HUZZAH! A professional says I’m not broken after all!)

But also–WTF did that even mean??

I hung up the phone as I swung open the door out of the cold November air, feet killing me, having walked about 4 miles during our long conversation. My thoughts were spinning.

Was she right?

I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I realized that this was a pattern–flowing through grief (and life) and riding the ride. A pattern my family had repeated again when my Grandpa died a couple years after. And when my Uncle died many years after that. And by the time things started really going downhill with my dad, I had been through this before. Unconsciously, I already knew what to do. I had just never put words to it.

Maybe there was something to that.

That conversation happened two years ago, and I’ve been connecting a lot of dots since.

My cousin helped me recognize something I'd been practicing a long time–an important piece of that puzzle that I’ve spent years of my life trying to solve.

What is it that allows us to keep LIVING, rather than feeling trapped by circumstances we can't control?

My mom and Lorie weren’t actually giving me different answers. They were teaching different parts of the same process.

My mom taught me that I can’t choose my circumstances, but I can choose how I respond to them. I can choose whether or not I believe the stories I tell myself about those circumstances.

Both things are true: Yes, life is taking me for a ride I have very little control over (as it does for all of us), AND I also have a steering wheel.

I have agency.

But Lorie helped me realize the prerequisite to arrive at that agency: acceptance.

Because you cannot respond to a reality you haven’t first accepted.

Our knee-jerk reactions to hard moments are often resistance (because you and I are human, after all, right?)

“This shouldn’t be happening. Whose fault is this? It’s so unfair. Why can’t I ever get a break? Why is it always me?”

OR

“It’s fine–it’s really not that bad. Other people have it so much worse, I can put a smile on my face. Endure–it’s what every woman has done before me. I have so much to be grateful for!!”

Both are forms of resistance, either by fighting reality, or trying to bypass feeling the hard emotions altogether. (Ask me how I know!!)

I keep thinking back to Lorie’s roller coaster.

Fighting the fact that I’m on it doesn’t get me anywhere except exhausted. By the time the ride comes back around and the ride stops, I’m too spent to even notice I’m free to get off.

When the ride finally stops, I’m rattled, but I’m awake. I get to choose what happens next. I might throw up. I might go get in line for the teacup ride with my new friend. I might notice I’m feeling pretty proud of myself, actually. I might walk straight out of the theme park and never come back!

I couldn’t control the ride. But I had agency in how I experienced it, the second I stopped fighting it.

So when it comes to finding answers to that one question, I won’t kid myself–I know I’ll never have them all. (Alas, the human experience! 🙃)

But I do know that this is one of them.

Because every hard season, and every tiny, hard, everyday moment–through grief. Motherhood. Marriage. Health. Career. All have asked this same thing of me. Even the SMALLEST moments.

For instance, the two versions of me you could meet on a given day sitting in traffic. (You won’t judge me, will you?)

One version resists the circumstances and starts swearing, honking, thinking “why is everyone an idiot? Where did these people learn how to drive?” or “How am I 38 years old and still haven’t learned my lesson to leave 15 minutes earlier? GET IT TOGETHER.” I am jumping out of my skin with irritation over a situation I have absolutely no control over in that moment.

The other version who accepts it thinks, “Well THIS is pretty fucking annoying and unexpected! 😆 Now what? Well, I can listen to a chapter of my audiobook I’ve been wanting to get back to. I finally have time to call my mom and catch up.”

Acceptance is what unlocks agency.

Coming back to this, again and again, is what has allowed me to keep living–experiencing the full depths of joy and sorrow all at once.

It’s what allows all of us to keep participating in our own lives, even when they don’t look anything like the lives we would have chosen. 💛

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