Feeling Joy

A couple years ago, I posted about my method for finding joy. A lot has happened between then and now, but I haven't lost sight of this simple goal. And actually, I've gotten pretty good at finding joy, mainly because my life is chock full of a multitude of joys right now: two beautiful,  healthy children who I truly enjoy getting to know as people, a new job in which I thrive and grow and inspire others to do the same, a husband who is still my best friend, and true girlfriends who make me laugh until my side hurts.

When I posted about finding joy, I also mentioned feeling joy.  There are many things I (try to) do to keep perspective so that I can feel all the joy in my life: writing, walking, breathing, reading, and, lately, meditating.  Each of these helps me to find perspective, to slow down and remember to see the beauty that exists among the chaos and monotony of everyday life. 

Still, though, even after going through my joy list, I occasionally find myself lacking. There is something that runs beneath my life and pulls me back from fully leaning in. Something that nibbles at the edges of my joy, urging me to push it down, just a little, lest it be taken away from me.

It's sneaky, though. In fact, it's so subtle, that I didn't even really see it until recently, when I was reading Brene Brown's Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, and Lead.  Brene is part researcher and part storyteller; her research revolves around vulnerability, shame, and courage.  I first came across her work in her T.E.D. talk The Power of Vulnerability. It resonated deeply with me, as has my journey through her book.

In the book, Brene talks about how she will sometimes stand in front of her children, sleeping in their beds, and ponder how amazingly blessed she is. At which point she will immediately and vividly envision some terrible fate arriving at their doorstep, taking it all way.

And I thought: Holy crap. I do that.

Like last night, when I was laying in bed after a wonderfully fulfilling day with my children. I was reflecting on how good life was when I had the sudden realization that, if I got cancer and died right now, my baby girl wouldn't even remember me.  It was such an awful, heart-breaking thought that I had to get out of bed and find something else to do. 

Most of the time, my fear doesn't show up in horrible visions of planes crashing or houses burning or cancer taking lives. It's not like I walk around in the midst of an major meltdown, fending off anxiety attacks left and right (I did when I was pregnant, but that's a whole different story). It's much more subtle than that.  It's more of a backing off, a stepping away, an invisible shield that rises between the life I'm building and my engagement in it.

Brene explains that this method of protection, which she calls "foreboding joy," exists among many of us. And she says it has a whole lot to with vulnerability.  To be lost in a moment of joy is to be vulnerable. Open. Soft. Unprotected. So we unconsciously try to beat life to the punch; we imagine the bad things that could happen as a way of protecting ourselves if they do.

In the end, of course, we can never prevent the bad things from happening.  Instead, we're only preventing ourselves from truly feeling the love that exists within each moment; from fully accessing the joy that is right there in front of us.

Brene's solution? Gratitude. In her book, she talks about how to use gratitude inside those moments when we are trying to access joy but find ourselves facing only fear and impulses to control.  As soon as she feels a "shudder of vulnerability," she uses it as a trigger to acknowledge her gratitude.  In that moment, she turns the fear around by fully acknowledging all for which she is grateful, right there, right then.

I tried this today at the park. It was a gorgeous day and my children, bellies full of ice cream and hearts full of love, were skipping ahead on the path in front of me.  Watching them, I was overcome with the beauty of it all. For a moment.  Then slight feelings of discomfort starting creeping in. I thought of the book. I thought of my life.  And I silently repeated to myself:

I am grateful.

I am grateful.

I am so, so grateful.

And I was.

On Finding Joy

I recently stumbled across a quotation that said, "Learn to feel joy."

That's it. Learn to feel joy.

(Dramatic pause here).

At first glance, it didn't seem like all that profound of a statement. But the more I pondered it, the more I liked it. In fact, I liked it so much that I taped it up on my bedroom mirror. It sums up the essence of the very thing I try to do each day: To live this life in front of me. To love it, not tolerate it. And that is anything but simple.

It's not that I don't have joyful things in my life. My life is so full of things that fill me up that it's almost a little ridiculous. Two healthy, happy children to hug and kiss each day. A husband who is also my best friend. A job that I love so much it truly feels like play. A beautiful house. A healthy body. A car, food in my fridge, clothes to wear. Joy, joy, joy.

But I don't always feel joyful. Cognitively, I know that I've pretty much got it made. But I sometimes struggle to emotionally connect to that reality. I've gotten better, though. These days, I'm feeling more joy than I've ever felt before. I think it's because I'm discovering my own little joy formula: those things that I *must* do to feel the joy that exists inside my life. What are those things? I'm so very glad you asked (I was going to tell you anyway).

I blog. Blogging has become a form of self therapy for me. It helps me sort through my feelings, step back from the nitty gritty details of daily life and regain perspective. And I *love* up the comments I get in response to the things that I write. Not because I crave the validation (well, a little bit because of that), but because it's an awesome feeling to connect with others across space and time all while sitting here on the couch in my living room. And there is just something about knowing that my words have connected with someone else's journey that lifts me up.

I run. Correction: I ran. This summer, I was up to three miles at a time. And oh, it felt good. I learned to push through the feelings that I couldn't go one step further. To tolerate feeling crappy, to accept it as part of the moment, to trust that I could do the very thing I was sure I could not. And the runner's high when I got done? Freakin' awesome. But something happened along the way (it got hot, my husband returned to football practice and left me a single mom, I got lazy) and I stopped running. So now I'm back to walking. And although I don't get that same runner's high, walking is still an absolutely essential part of feeling good. When I start to feel decidedly unjoyful, it's often because I've skipped my walk for too many days in a row.

I remind myself to let go of the idea that worry helps. Many of us subconsciously believe that worrying about something will magically keep it from happening. We hold our worries in the back of our mind as we go throughout our day, convinced that this somehow protects us. And when the things we worry about *don't* happen, we attribute this to the fact that we worried about them. Which only reinforces our belief that worry helps. So then we worry some more. This works well, except for the fact that it doesn't really work at all. Worry doesn't actually help. And worse, it prevents us from actually engaging in the moment that's right in front of us. I put this little nugget of wisdom in action this past week after I dropped off my (tearful) Joseph at his first day of kindergarten and my (crying) Baby Girl at her new daycare. I could have spent my day worried about them, and in the past I would have. Instead, I consciously let it go and enjoyed my day at work. At the end of the day, I got to return to them, inhale their sweet scents as I swooped them into hugs, and hear all about their days (which were wonderful, by the way). Joy indeed.

I read. I love everything about books. Their smell, their weight in my hand, the way a brand new book creaks slightly when you open it. And I love the power of a book to take me to a different place and time. To open my eyes to new thoughts and experiences and perspectives. To shift my perspective so that, after reading a book for just a little while, I can return to the day in front of me with a new appreciation for what I have.

I try not to expect too much. One of the paradoxes of this whole joy thing is the recognition that every moment isn't going to be chock full of joy. In fact, most moments really aren't all that incredibly exciting or pleasurable. It took me a while to learn this. I think I'd envisioned most motherhood activities being inherently joyful. But really, much of motherhood is mundane and repetitive and, well, kind of boring. Expecting too much is a recipe that has disappointment written all over it. Instead, I try to take the moments for what they are, dirty floors, snotty noses and all. Joy has a way of creeping into the most mundane moments just when you've stopped looking for it.

I escape. When I've really had it, when my brain is full and my body is tired, I stop. I don't clean, I don't blog, I don't read, I just plain don't. The only thing I do is turn on the TV and disconnect. If I'm lucky, there's a Real Housewives Marathon on and I sit on the couch and don't move a muscle for three hours while I watch the drama unfold. The irony of this strategy is that it needs to be applied the most when I feel the least like I can afford to use it. It's when I'm feeling the most overwhelmed, the least self-confident, the most in need of action that I make myself stop. And sit. And watch. The next day, I'm almost always ready for action again.

I consciously shift my perspective. Dirty dishes waiting to be cleaned mean that I got to feed my children. A trip to the physician's office means I have access to the health care and the medicine I need to care for my children. Piles of laundry mean my children have clothes to wear. You get the drift. This strategy works best when I've already used other strategies to help clear my head a bit. Otherwise, I just end up feeling guilty and grumpy, and that's not good for anyone involved.

I pull myself out of my head. I have a terrible habit of living inside my head. I compose blog posts, analyze voicemails from work, mentally review my to-do list, plan the next activity, try to think of a witty response to a facebook post, yadda, yadda, yadda. But when I'm living in my head, I have a tendency to treat my children as interruptions and I hate that. I try to counteract this by making myself see, really see, what is in front of me. It usually works to smell my baby's skin. Or watch joy unfold on my son's face when I kneel down to really pay attention to what he is showing me.

I go to church. Beyond the obvious filling up of my spiritual cup, church is a place where I go to find my mom. It reminds me of the Sundays we spent in our own church, singing the songs, passing the peace, and waiting for the sermon to begin so that my mom would hand me a tic-tac to suck on. My bribe of choice for my own children is gummies, but there is something very calming about repeating the rituals of my childhood. Much of my mom is gone, but she remains in those rituals. And this brings me peace. And in peace, there is much joy.

I connect with other moms. Mommy bloggers, play dates for mommies (er, for the kids), and girls nights out (my personal favorite). All comprised of other moms who commiserate with me, encourage me, and laugh with me.


So how about you? What's in your recipe for joy?

Its a Onederful Life

I spent yesterday afternoon shopping for supplies for Baby Girl's upcoming birthday party. I'm usually not much of a shopper and I'm generally not a very girly girl, but there was something about ordering pink balloons, buying pink utensils, and paging through pink decorations to adorn Baby Girl's cake that made me deliriously happy. Truth be told, the elation could also have been from the Starbucks coffee running through my blood combined with the thought of the three child-free hours that stretched out in front of me as I ran those errands. Regardless, I happily bought a lot of pink. My mom, a confirmed pink aficionado and a woman who loved to shop, would have been tickled pink. It was fun. As I went about my shopping, planning for the party we are about to have to celebrate the one year anniversary of my baby girl's arrival into the world, I realized that I wasn't nearly as sad about reaching this milestone as I had envisioned I would be.

It's not that I'm not sad at all, of course. Raising children is essentially one long process of letting go and birthdays are always a little bittersweet. I'm hanging on to Baby Girl's babyhood where I can. I haven't, for example, been able to put away the sleepers she used in her first few months home. I've put away the rest of the clothes she's grown out of, but not those sleepers. Every once in a while I sneak into her room and pick up a sleeper and smell it and I am instantly transported back in time to those first surreal moments after she came home when the whole world seemed to shrink to just her and I and the love that emanated immediately from and for this tiny little being took over everything else. There is a period of time after a baby comes home when the outside world ceases to exist and you are seduced into believing that the whole world is full of the magic and possibilities that seem to surround you as you smell your baby's skin. (I will pause here to note that it's entirely possible that at least some of this bliss was post-cesarean Vicodin induced. But you know what I mean). So I can't put those sleepers away. I can't let that feeling go. Not yet.

And I officially retired my pump this week. We're not completely done nursing, but we're trying to cut back to morning and bedtime nursing only. There is no sadness involved in the actual retiring of the pump; I disliked pumping as much I loved nursing (and I loved nursing a lot). The tasks associated with that pump seemed endless. Bottles, and bags, and washing, and lugging, and freezing and thawing again. So I will not miss the pump. But I will miss what it represented. I *love* the closeness of nursing. I love being able to take a hungry little girl, feed her from my own body, and know that I had the power within me to give her exactly what she needed to feel completely satisfied. As long as I am nursing, I can do that for her. I can give her *everything* that she needs,without needing a single thing from outside of myself. I love being able to do that for her. The older she gets, the harder it will be to give her what she needs, to make her feel safe and loved and warm solely by giving myself to her. There is such a simplicity to the first year of life. I will miss that immensely.

So of course I am a bit nostalgic for what I am leaving behind. But mostly, I'm excited about what is ahead. I'm sure this is in part because Baby Girl has already evolved from a baby into a little girl. A little girl with really cute pig tails, to boot. And she is *such* a joyful toddler. She wakes up and goes to sleep with a smile on her face, gives us all kisses whenever we ask, and explores the world with a vigor that is quite simply a delight to watch. I am so grateful to have the opportunity to watch her grow from a tiny baby into a little girl; the road to Baby Girl was long and not a day goes by that I don't remind myself of how extraordinarily blessed I am to have her in my life.

I think my easy acceptance of Baby Girl's first birthday is in also in part due to the perspective I gained from watching Joseph grow from a teeny tiny baby boy into a nearly self-sufficient five- year-old. I am still stunned to realize how swiftly the years have gone by. Experiencing this first hand has taught me that trying to hold onto time is like trying to grasp water running through your hands: as hard as you may try, the feat is simply impossible. The best you can do is immerse yourself in the water, surrender to the feeling of it flowing over your body, and enjoy it while it lasts. That is the perspective I tried to bring into mothering Baby Girl. It gave me tolerance for the imbalance in our lives that the newborn stage created. Rather than flounder in it, I accepted it. I ate it up. I loved the crazy as much as I could. I gave myself over to that tiny little newborn baby girl. I let her drink from me and sleep with me and take nearly everything I had. And when I had to go back to work, I let myself come home, take her into my arms, and spend the rest of the night on the couch just holding her, ignoring the dishes that would go undone. I gave myself permission to say "no" to extra work, "no" to dinners out, "no" to any of those things that would mean more time away from her. All because I knew that this moment-- her one year old birthday-- would come sooner than I could possibly imagine and that when it came, I would want to know that I had lived those moments as fully as I could.