Star Date: 06.09.25
I never expected grief to hang around this long.
I thought I could muscle through it—carry the weight with my usual resolve, press forward with projects and good intentions, maybe even outrun the ache by helping others. But loss doesn’t work that way. It settles in like a fog and, some days, you can barely see through it.
It’s not that I didn’t want to be happy again. It’s that happiness felt… forbidden. Like smiling would dishonor the people I’ve lost. Like laughter would betray their memory. Maybe you’ve been there, too.
There came a point—after months of quietly trudging forward—when I realized I wasn’t just grieving the ones I’d lost. I was grieving the joy I wasn’t allowing myself to feel.
That’s when I did something I hadn’t done before: I asked for help.
I reached out to a professional and began sorting through the tangled threads of sorrow, guilt, and fear. It wasn’t about forgetting or moving on—it was about making space. Space for their memory and my healing. Space for sadness and joy. Space to let myself be happy again.
There’s a quiet truth I’ve come to hold: happiness doesn’t mean the grief is gone. It means grace has made room for both.
Bronnie Ware, who wrote The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, said this one kept surfacing:
“I wish that I had let myself be happier.”
Not that happiness was impossible. Just that it wasn’t permitted. It was a choice left unmade.
I don’t want that to be my story. I don’t want it to be yours either.
So today, I’m choosing to smile. I’m choosing to celebrate the life that still pulses through my veins. I’m letting the light in, even if it’s just a flicker some days. Because Jesus came to give life—and not just survival, but abundant life.
Even on this side of loss.
“You turned my mourning into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy.”
— Psalm 30:11
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