Allow the grief. Choose the joy.

“Choose Joy” in my prettiest script I painted onto a wooden sign to hang in the house. It was one of countless efforts to bring happiness into my home during my first marriage. I thought that maybe if we could just be reminded to choose joy, choose, kindness, choose peace, that maybe we would do so. I realize now that I was skipping a step.

Grief.

I had not allowed myself to grieve all of the things that were outside of my control. The past. His words. His actions. His choices. The loss of days and weeks on end pleading for things to be different. The acceptance that things would never be how I had dreamed they would. It was not until I forced myself to sit in my reality, to step out of the day dream of what I wanted my marriage to be, that I was able to choose my joy.

You see, grief and joy go hand in hand. When we are numb to the grief we are also numb to the joy. You cannot have one without the other. Ways we avoid grief can look like:

• being in autopilot the majority of the time

• over-functioning as an attempt to avoid circumstances beyond our control

• making excuses and trying to fix people who let us down or harm us

• staying stuck in situations that no longer serve us

Maybe this is your “choose joy” sign. You know what to do. Allow the grief, choose the joy.