Creating a Life That Holds Both Grief and Joy

The False Choice

There’s a silent pressure placed on those who grieve: “Pick a lane.”

If you’re smiling, people assume you’re “better.”
If you’re still mourning, they worry you’re “stuck.”

But real life—the full, human, beautiful, broken experience—is both.

You can be grateful and aching. You can feel peace and still miss them. You can laugh deeply and still carry a scar.

You can carry joy in one hand and grief in the other.

And neither cancels the other out.

Grief Is the Soil. Joy Is the Bloom.

For a long time, I thought joy would only return once I had completely healed.

But that’s not how it works.

Joy doesn’t wait for permission. It shows up in unexpected moments—in memory, in sunlight, in laughter that bubbles up without warning.

Joy doesn’t erase the grief. It grows inside it.

Grief is the soil. Rich with memory. Fertile with meaning.

And when you allow it to soften you, something new begins to grow.

You don’t abandon your grief.

You expand your capacity to also feel joy.

Emotional Fluency

Just like we learn to speak the language of grief, we must also relearn the language of joy.

After loss, joy can feel foreign. Unsafe. Like betrayal.

We wonder, “Is it okay to feel this happy?” “Does it mean I’ve moved on?” “What will people think?”

But here’s the truth:

Grief rewires you.

Joy returns differently.

It’s quieter. Truer. Less about excitement, more about presence.

Fluency means allowing both languages—grief and joy—to exist in the same body.

To hold each emotion with reverence.

To trust that your heart knows how to speak both.

What It Looks Like in Real Life

Fluency isn’t always poetic. Sometimes, it’s painfully ordinary.

It’s crying on the way to the grocery store, then laughing at something your child says five minutes later.

It’s canceling plans one day, then feeling fully alive in nature the next.

It’s looking at a photo and feeling both warm and wrecked.

It’s setting a boundary, then giving yourself grace for needing one.

Living fluently means honoring your needs without explanation.

It means letting grief have its voice—and letting joy have its day.

Building a Bilingual Life

Here’s what I’ve learned after 25 years of walking with grief and reaching for joy:

You don’t need to wait until you’re “done grieving.”

You’re allowed to build a life now.

A life that reflects both your sorrow and your strength.
Your longing and your love.
Your absence and your abundance.

That life might be a little quieter. A little softer. A little more intentional.

But it will be real.

It will be yours.

And it will speak both languages—with honesty, with beauty, and with reverence.

Final Thoughts

You are not failing because you still grieve.

You are not faking because you feel joy.

You are simply becoming fluent—day by day—in the full language of being human.

So keep speaking both.

Your life is big enough to hold it all.