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Taking Back Joy

THE FIRST WEEK of middle school, my best friend informed me that I wasn’t cool enough to hang out with. This hurtful breakup turned out to be a blessing. Soon after I was dumped, three girls picked me up. We became friends for life, adding three more to our circle in high school. Mindy, Eve, Jami, Elise, Pam, and Beth—or as we still call ourselves, “the Girls.” The Girls have advised me on everything from what to wear to prom to what job to take to what to do when a baby wakes up at midnight…and again at three a.m.

In the fall of 2015, Beth’s daughter was becoming a bat mitzvah. Part of me didn’t want to go. Just days before he died, Dave and I had picked a date for our son’s bar mitzvah. The thought that Dave would not be at our child’s ceremonial transition to adulthood cast a giant pall over the occasion. But during the dark days of that summer, the Girls had checked in daily and took turns coming to California. By showing up again and again, they proved to me that I was not alone. I wanted to be there for them in the happy times, just as they’d been there for me in the sad.

Sitting with the Girls and their families at the bat mitzvah service felt deeply comforting, almost as if I had been transported back to when we were teenagers, to the innocent days when a bad haircut was a big problem. Beth’s daughter crushed the Torah reading and we all teared up with pride. The ceremony ended with the traditional reciting of the Kaddish, the prayer for those who have died. Instantly, six hands reached out to me from in front, in back, and across the pew. My friends held me tightly and, as they had promised, we got through it together.

At the party that night, our kids ran around having a great time. I watched my son and daughter chatting away with their “almost cousins” and thought there should be a word for the joy you feel when your kids are friends with your friends’ kids. In addition to the Girls, there were other guests from our Miami school days, including the cutest boy in our class: Brook Rose. Even his name is perfect. Back then, none of us believed we had a chance with him, and after college he confirmed that when he told us he’s gay.

The DJ started playing “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire and Brook reached for my hand. “Come on,” he said, flashing his gorgeous smile. He led me to the dance floor, and just like in high school we let go, dancing and singing. And then I burst into tears.

Brook quickly maneuvered me to the outdoor patio and asked what was wrong. At first, I assumed I was missing Dave, except I knew exactly what that felt like and somehow this was different. Then it dawned on me. Dancing to an upbeat song from childhood had taken me to a place where I wasn’t filled with loneliness and longing. I wasn’t just feeling okay. I actually felt happy. And that happiness was followed immediately by a flood of guilt. How could I be happy when Dave was gone?

The next day, my kids and I headed to Philadelphia to visit Adam and his family. I told Adam about my meltdown on the dance floor. He wasn’t surprised. “Of course this was the first moment you were happy,” he told me. “You haven’t been doing a single thing that brings you joy.”

Adam was right. For more than four months, I’d been completely focused on my kids, my job, and just making it through each day. I had stopped doing anything Dave and I had done together for fun like seeing movies, going out to dinner with friends, watching Game of Thrones, or playing Settlers of Catan or Scrabble. Catan was especially upsetting to me since we’d been playing during our last moments together.

There were plenty of reasons to hole up. I didn’t want to leave my kids with a babysitter even after they fell asleep in case they woke up. I was afraid that if I tried to go out, I’d end up crying in public, embarrassing myself and ruining everyone else’s good time. I had made one attempt to be social early that fall. I invited a small group of friends over to watch a movie. We started the evening with frozen yogurt in the kitchen, and I kept thinking, You can do this. Pretend everything’s normal. The movie had been recommended by a friend as fun and light. We started watching. So far so good. Then a few minutes in, the main character’s wife died. I thought the froyo was going to come back up. Everything was not normal.

In my Facebook post thirty days into widowhood, I wrote that I’d never have another moment of pure joy. When friends who had lost spouses assured me that this wasn’t true and someday I would feel happy again, I doubted them. Then Earth, Wind & Fire proved me wrong. But the moment of happiness on the dance floor was fleeting, barely rearing its head before guilt whacked it back into its hole.

Survivor guilt is a thief of joy—yet another secondary loss from death. When people lose a loved one, they are not just wracked with grief but also with remorse. It’s another personalization trap: “Why am I the one who is still alive?” Even after acute grief is gone, the guilt remains. “I didn’t spend enough time with him.” And death isn’t the only kind of loss that triggers guilt. When a company lays off employees, those who keep their jobs often struggle with survivor guilt. The thought process begins with “It should’ve been me.” This is followed by gratitude—“I’m glad it wasn’t me”—which is quickly washed away by shame: “I’m a bad person for feeling happy when my friends lost their jobs.”

A life chasing pleasure without meaning is an aimless existence. Yet a meaningful life without joy is a depressing one. Until that moment on the dance floor, I did not realize I’d been holding myself back from happiness. And even that fleeting moment was ruined by guilt, making my prediction that I’d never feel pure joy again seem accurate. Then one day on the phone Dave’s brother Rob gave me a true gift. “Since the day Dave met you, all he ever wanted was to make you happy,” Rob told me, his voice choking up. “He would want you to be happy—even now. Don’t take that away from him.” My sister-in-law Amy helped too by making me see how much my mood affected my children. They had told her they were feeling better because “Mommy stopped crying all the time.”

When we focus on others, we find motivation that is difficult to marshal for ourselves alone. In 2015, U.S. Army major Lisa Jaster was attempting to graduate from the elite Ranger School. Having served in Afghanistan and Iraq, she thought she could complete the grueling program in nine weeks. But getting through land navigation, water survival, staged assaults, ambushes, mountaineering, and an obstacle course took her twenty-six weeks. The final event was a twelve-mile march carrying a thirty-five-pound rucksack plus nine quarts of water and a rifle. By the ten-mile mark, Lisa felt nauseous, her feet were blistered, and she thought there was no way she could make it to the finish line. But then an image flashed through her mind—a cherished picture of her and her kids. Her son had Batman on his T-shirt and her daughter had Wonder Woman on hers. On the photo Lisa had written, “I want to be their superhero.” Lisa ran the last two miles and beat her target time by a minute and a half. She went on to make history as one of the first three women to become an Army Ranger. When I met Lisa, I told her she wasn’t just her kids’ superhero. I shared her story at the dinner table and now she’s a hero to my kids too.

With Rob’s and Amy’s words ringing in my ears, I decided to try having fun for my children—and with my children. Dave had loved playing Catan with our kids because it taught them to think ahead and anticipate opponents’ moves. One afternoon, I took the game down from the shelf. I asked my kids matter-of-factly if they wanted to play. They did. In the past, I was always orange. My daughter was blue. My son was red. Dave was gray. When just the three of us sat down to play, my daughter pulled out the gray pieces. My son got upset and tried to take them away from her, insisting, “That was Daddy’s color. You can’t be gray!” I held his hand and said, “She can be gray. We take things back.”

“We take it back” became our mantra. Rather than give up the things that reminded us of Dave, we embraced them and made them an ongoing part of our lives. We took back rooting for the teams that Dave loved: the Minnesota Vikings and the Golden State Warriors. We took back poker, which Dave had played with our kids since they were young. They laughed at the story about how one day Dave came home from work to find them playing poker at ages five and seven and said it was one of the proudest moments of his life. Chamath Palihapitiya, our friend who had played poker with Dave frequently and enthusiastically, stepped in to continue their Texas Hold’em education. I would have tried but I don’t think Dave would have wanted them to learn from a “lousy player”—Dave’s words, but boy did Chamath agree frequently and enthusiastically.

For myself, I took back Game of Thrones. It wasn’t nearly as much fun as watching with Dave, who had read the entire series of books and could track who was plotting against whom. But I focused, caught up, and ended the season rooting for Khaleesi and her dragons, just as Dave and I would have together. I started having friends over to watch movies, looking more carefully for ones where no one loses a spouse. And my best take-back was finding the perfect online Scrabble opponent. Dave and I had played together. Dave and Rob had played together. Now Rob and I play each other. I am a poor substitute since the two brothers were evenly matched; in almost a hundred games, I’ve beaten Rob a grand total of once. But now for just a few minutes on our phones throughout the day, Rob and I are connected to each other…and to Dave.

We want others to be happy. Allowing ourselves to be happy—accepting that it is okay to push through the guilt and seek joy—is a triumph over permanence. Having fun is a form of self-compassion; just as we need to be kind to ourselves when we make mistakes, we also need to be kind to ourselves by enjoying life when we can. Tragedy breaks down your door and takes you prisoner. To escape takes effort and energy. Seeking joy after facing adversity is taking back what was stolen from you. As U2 lead singer Bono has said, “Joy is the ultimate act of defiance.”

One of the comments on my thirty-day Facebook post that affected me most deeply was from a woman named Virginia Schimpf Nacy. Virginia was happily married when her husband died suddenly in his sleep at age fifty-three. Six and a half years later, the night before her daughter’s wedding, Virginia’s son died of a heroin overdose. She insisted on going forward with the wedding and planned her son’s funeral the next day. Soon, Virginia was working with her local school district on a drug prevention program, joining forces with parents and counselors to create a grief support group, and advocating for legislative changes to fight addiction. She also looked for ways to counter her sadness. She started watching old Carol Burnett shows and went on a cross-country road trip with her chocolate Labrador to visit her daughter and son-in-law. “Both deaths are woven into the fabric of my life, but they’re not what define me,” she said. “Joy is very important to me. And I can’t count on joy to come from my daughter or anyone else. It has to come from me. It is time to kick the shit out of Option C.”

When we look for joy, we often focus on the big moments. Graduating from school. Having a child. Getting a job. Being reunited with family. But happiness is the frequency of positive experiences, not the intensity. In a twelve-year study of bereaved spouses in Australia, 26 percent managed to find joy after loss as often as they had before. What set them apart was that they re-engaged in everyday activities and interactions.

“How we spend our days,” author Annie Dillard writes, is “how we spend our lives.” Rather than waiting until we’re happy to enjoy the small things, we should go and do the small things that make us happy. After a depressing divorce, a friend of mine made a list of things she enjoyed—listening to musicals, seeing her nieces and nephews, looking at art books, eating flan—and made a vow to do one thing on the list after work each day. As blogger Tim Urban describes it, happiness is the joy you find on hundreds of forgettable Wednesdays.

My New Year’s resolution for 2016 was based on this idea. Each night, I was still trying to write down three things I had done well, but as my confidence returned, this seemed less necessary. Then Adam suggested a new idea: write down three moments of joy every day. Of all the New Year’s resolutions I’ve ever made, this is the one I’ve kept the longest by far. Now nearly every night before I go to sleep, I jot down three happy moments in my notebook. Doing this makes me notice and appreciate these flashes of joy; when something positive happens, I think, This will make the notebook. It’s a habit that brightens the whole day.

Many years ago, a mentor of mine, Larry Brilliant, tried to teach me that happiness requires work. Larry and I had grown close while starting Google’s philanthropic initiative, so I was heartbroken when his son Jon was diagnosed with lung cancer at age twenty-four. Jon was treated at Stanford and often spent nights at our house since we lived closer to the hospital. He brought his treasured childhood Lego sets to play with my kids, and to this day, when my kids play with Legos I think of Jon.

For a few months, it looked like Jon had made a miraculous recovery, so when he died a year and a half later, his family was doubly shattered. Larry’s deep spirituality helped build his resilience. For ten years, Larry and his wife Girija had lived in India, where they studied with a Hindu guru and practiced Buddhist meditation. After losing their son, they focused their spiritual work on turning some of the pain into gratitude for the years when Jon was healthy. At Dave’s funeral, Larry sobbed with me, saying that he never expected us to be grieving for another loved one so soon. Then, with his hands on my shoulders, as if to hold me up, he said he’d be there to make sure the pain didn’t drown me. “A day of joy is fifteen minutes. A day of pain is fifteen years,” he said. “No one pretends this is easy, but the job of life is to make those fifteen minutes into fifteen years and those fifteen years into fifteen minutes.”

Paying attention to moments of joy takes effort because we are wired to focus on the negatives more than the positives. Bad events tend to have a stronger effect on us than good events. This made sense in prehistoric times: if you weren’t haunted by the memory of the time someone you loved ate the poisonous berries, you might nibble on them yourself. But today we give that attention to ordinary setbacks and daily hassles. A broken windshield wiper or a coffee stain has the power to drag us down. We zero in on potential threats and miss opportunities to smile.

Just as labeling negative emotions can help us process them, labeling positive emotions works too. Writing about joyful experiences for just three days can improve people’s moods and decrease their visits to health centers a full three months later. We can savor the smallest of daily events—how good a warm breeze feels or how delicious French fries taste (especially when snatched from someone else’s plate). My mom is one of the most optimistic people I know, and when she gets in bed each night she always spends a few moments being grateful for the comfort of the pillow under her head.

As we get older, we define happiness less in terms of excitement and more in terms of peacefulness. Reverend Veronica Goines sums this up as, “Peace is joy at rest, and joy is peace on its feet.” Sharing positive events with another person also increases our own pleasant emotions over the next few days. In the words of Shannon Sedgwick Davis, a human rights advocate whose work requires her to deal with atrocities on a daily basis, “Joy is a discipline.”

A friend of mine who lost his wife of forty-eight years right after his seventieth birthday told me that to fight despair he needed to shake up his routine. Doing the same things he’d done with his wife left him yearning for his old life, so he made a concerted effort to seek out new activities. He advised me to do the same. Along with taking things back, I looked for ways to move forward. I started small. My kids and I began playing hearts, a card game my grandfather taught me (and one I’m better at than poker). We began biking on weekends, which Dave couldn’t do because it hurt his back. I started playing the piano again, something I hadn’t done in thirty years. I play badly due to a lack of talent compounded by a lack of practice. Still, plinking out a song makes me feel better. “It gives me a smile,” to paraphrase a Billy Joel song I play badly and sing off-key, “to forget about life for a while.”

Playing music at the edge of our capabilities is what psychologists call a “just manageable difficulty.” This level requires all of our attention, giving us no room to think about anything else. Many of us remember being happiest in flow—the state of total absorption in a task. When you’re in a deep conversation with a friend and suddenly realize that two hours have flown by. When you take a road trip and the dashed line becomes a rhythm. When you’re engrossed in reading a Harry Potter book and forget Hogwarts isn’t real. Total Muggle mistake. But there’s a catch. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who pioneered this research, found that people don’t report being happy while they are in flow. They are so engaged that they only describe it as joyful afterward. Even trying to survey people about their flow states jolted them right out of it. Good work, psychologists.

Many turn to exercise for flow. After losing his wife, comedian Patton Oswalt noticed that comic books like Batman portrayed strange reactions to grief. In real life, “if Bruce Wayne watched his parents murdered at 9, he wouldn’t become this buff hero,” Oswalt said. “How about someone dies, and they just get fat and angry and confused? But no, immediately, they’re at the gym.” Actually, hitting the gym—or just the pavement for a brisk walk—can be hugely beneficial. The physical health effects of exercise are well known, including lower risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, diabetes, and arthritis. Many doctors and therapists also point to exercise as one of the best ways to improve psychological well-being. For some adults over fifty who suffer from major depression, working out may even be as effective as taking an antidepressant.

Flow might sound like a luxury, but after tragedy it can become essential. Four years ago in Syria, Wafaa (last name not included to protect her family’s security) fell into despair when her husband was arrested. He has not been seen or heard from since. Just a few months before that, her sixteen-year-old son was killed while playing soccer outside their apartment. Wafaa couldn’t bear the pain and considered taking her own life, but she was pregnant with her sixth child and that stopped her. She and her brother fled to Istanbul with her two youngest children, while her three older children stayed behind in Syria. Not long after, she received a call from her daughter, who had a son of her own. He had just been killed by a sniper a week before his second birthday. Beyond unimaginable. Unfathomable.

Wafaa’s experience is horrifyingly common. There are more refugees today than there have been at any time since World War II; more than 65 million people have had their lives viciously torn apart. If Option B for me means coping with the loss of a spouse, Option B for refugees means coping with loss upon loss upon loss: loss of loved ones, home, country, and all that is familiar. When I read Wafaa’s story, I was struck by her incredible resilience and got in touch to learn more. She opened up about her struggles. “When my son was murdered, I thought I would die,” she told us through a translator. “Being a mother saved me. I need to smile for my other children.”

When Wafaa arrived in Turkey, she spent most days alone with her children while her brother tried to find work. She did not speak the language, knew almost no one, and felt overwhelmingly lonely. Then she found a community center for Syrians and met other women who were also struggling. Little by little, Wafaa found moments of joy. “Praying makes me happy,” she said. “My relationship with God is stronger. I understand him more and I know he will keep giving me strength.”

Along with prayer, she finds comfort and flow in making meals for her family and friends. “Some days, time moves slowly and I think too much. Cooking gives me something to look forward to. Cooking is like breathing in Syria. It gives me oxygen. I’m not a painter, but I love creating. The smells…the feel of the meat. No matter where I am, I can try to re-create home. Cooking gives me comfort and helps me focus. Sometimes I lose myself in the cooking. Then the time goes quickly. My mind goes quiet.” When one of Wafaa’s neighbors in Istanbul became sick, Wafaa made her food every day for a week. “It filled me with happiness to think I could help her with food—and Syrian food! It was my way to say, ‘Take this from my homeland. I have nothing else to give.’ ” Caring for her children and others is a source of joy for Wafaa. As she told us, “When my children smile, I feel happiness. I feel that I’m still here for a reason. I will be healed through healing them.”

Whether you see joy as a discipline, an act of defiance, a luxury, or a necessity, it is something everyone deserves. Joy allows us to go on living and loving and being there for others.

Even when we’re in great distress, joy can still be found in moments we seize and moments we create. Cooking. Dancing. Hiking. Praying. Driving. Singing Billy Joel songs off-key. All of these can provide relief from pain. And when these moments add up, we find that they give us more than happiness; they also give us strength.