JOY IS NOT A BETRAYAL

Resilience has been a lifelong goal for me. I speak, write books, host a podcast,

facilitate workshops, blog about life, grief, and the various types of loss, and how to get

through it.

Where Joy Takes Flight

During many years of grief work, I have met so many people who think that if they move

on with their lives or learn to laugh again and allow joy back in that it is a betrayal to the

person they are grieving.

I share my lived experiences so that real people can identify with me and hopefully be

inspired by my survival, by my ability to reclaim my life after so much pain caused by too

many losses. Looking back, there were three things that made that possible.

If I had to teach someone how to reclaim their life after profound grief, this is what I

would tell them.

The first is to Reclaim Your Body – feel where tension stays in your body, do slow breathing,

get massages -that’s what I did. REST. Get good sleep, eat well.

Some people run. Some hike. Some lift heavy things. Some meditate. Some change how they eat.

Some help others. Some do all of the above. I eat chocolate.

Lesson Two- Reclaim Your Inner Authority. Release any guilt you may be feeling. Guilt never

helps anyone. Give yourself permission to laugh and enjoy life. That can sometimes seem hard, but please give yourself that permission to move forward.

We moved from Hawaiʻi when our youngest daughter was diagnosed with leukemia—right at the beginning of COVID. For six weeks, the over-the-phone diagnosis was COVID. Finally, I urged her to see a doctor who would see her in-person. Then, on the 35th anniversary of the date my son died, she was diagnosed with the exact same horrible disease.

Yes. The universe has a dark sense of humor.

We moved to care for her. We were isolated—COVID, compromised immune system, fear

layered on fear. I cried every day for the first year because I missed my favorite house. I missed the island that was my home. And no surprise, I was scared to lose another child to cancer.

She nearly died five times during one hospitalization—but she survived nearly three years of

harsh chemotherapy treatment.

We started talking about if we should go back to Maui.

Then our house burned down. Along with our town.

One of our tenants died in the fire. We had friends and clients die. My older daughter barely

escaped. She developed PTSD and lung damage from the smoke.

More loss.

Lesson Three is to Reclaim Your Future—Ours had been slapped down by the fires. But we

adapted. We bought a house on the mainland. And designing the house we are going to rebuild has been fun…choosing light fixtures, faucets and furniture. So, planning your future is how you take your life back—by choosing what comes next-- instead of letting the past decide for you.

I flew to Maui several times to offer grief workshops to fire survivors. Seeing my old my home

and my quaint little town reduced to ash and debris—was devastating. It looked like a war zone.

Everything gray. Everything gone.

But something else was there too.

Strength.

Conviction.

Community.

I volunteer with the American Cancer Society. I speak with newly diagnosed patients and those who’ve just lost someone they love. I’ve written books about grief—about my son’s life, about navigating loss in six-word lessons, about surviving a violent childhood, and funny thing—they are all about resilience.

I’ve written fiction, children’s books, and stories meant to make people laugh—because joy still matters.

And that’s why I’m blogging about it today.

I am living proof that grief is the natural by-product of love.

But it’s also a teacher. That platitude—“time heals all wounds”—I tell my grief clients right away: it’s not true. The grief doesn’t go away. The hole in your heart doesn’t close.

But you adapt.

You learn to live with it.

And when tragedy breaks you open, you have a choice. You can let it destroy you. Let it define you. Or you can turn your pain into strength.

How do you do that?

First—you allow yourself to feel the pain. It will hurt like hell. But you can stay with it. And I

promise you—it won’t kill you.

I’m a big fan of support groups. Not everyone is—but one-on-one support matters too. You need at least one safe person. Someone you can be honest with. Heart-to-heart honest.

Let it out.

Because grief isn’t weakness. It is not mental illness.

It’s love—with nowhere to go.

And joy?

Joy isn’t betrayal.

Joy is survival.

I can’t promise you that grief will ever disappear. I wish I could.

I can promise you this: if you let yourself feel it—really feel it—it will change you, but it does

not have to destroy you.

Somewhere along the way, if you allow it, joy will return. Not the same joy you had before—but a deeper one. A braver one. A joy that knows loss and chooses life anyway.

My daughter relapsed. She had to go through a new type of immunotherapy. She was scared. She grieved for the loss of more months of good health. She grieved for being stuck in bed in the BMT unit of her hospital. But, she worked from her hospital bed. She fought hard to live. She believed that she could reclaim her life. She just went to Munich and London. Next week she heads to Paris. She lives every precious moment.

She is my shining example of reclaiming your life.

So, if you remember nothing else I’ve expressed today, remember this:

You have the power to survive.

And your joy—when it comes—is not a betrayal.

It is a victory.

Go reclaim your life.

Shirley