I really had no idea how closely joy and grief are linked together. I thought of them on opposite ends of some spectrum, grief so far down at that end that I never really get all the way there, and joy so far over on the other side that I never really get there either. I mean, I’ve visited the neighborhoods. I know sorrow. I know happy. I know fun and meaning and nostalgia and excitement and gratitude. But I’ve never really, really, visited grief, and I’ve never really, really, visited joy. And I certainly didn’t think they were intimate entwined lovers.

It’s so odd that here in 2021 after what we’ve all been through, the loudest calling in my life is for joy. It’s unexpected. It seems out of place. I keep checking in, looking around me, going, ‘Really? Now?” Now that I’ve gotten so good at slipping and sliding around in the underworld trying to make sense of my suffering and the suffering of the planet, now that I know that journey back and forth and sideways and now that I can bear it, survive it, face it, transmute it even, now all of a sudden comes the time for joy? How strange.

But yes, there it is, unmistakable, in the tremble of the leaves on the tree in my little back patio (‘joy’, they whisper) and there it is again in that blue sky so clean and deep that it hurts your eyes to fully see it (‘joy’, it shines). The little dusty red house finches that come to my feeder each morning screech joy! and the tiny seedlings pushing through the soil in the flats in my living room stretch joy! and the tarot cards I pull slap joy and the people I talk to speak joy and most surprising of all, my heart, pounding away, thudding joy joy joy joy.

So I head off in that direction, looking for where joy lives, and I find that it’s right next to love. That makes sense, sure, but then unexpectedly I find right next to love and joy, grief, and that shocks me, but also makes me feel a little better about the whole thing because it gives it an authenticity that I was afraid it wouldn’t have. I don’t want saccharin sticky ooey gooey simulacrum joy. I don’t want clean, convenient, bearable joy. I want joy to break me open like my own agony broke me open (what a gift). I want my joy made of mud that I pull up from the earth to smear on my face and thighs and joy that pulls my head back to howl with laughter and some other wild thing that is as ineffable as the grief and love it hangs out with.

Of course it makes sense, though, that joy and grief and love are all together. Grief is love. What would there be to grieve if it wasn’t? Grief exists inside of and because of love. And loving big enough and hopeful enough and courageous enough begets joy.

I think. This is a new journey for me, and like every new journey, I can’t even see the path, much less where it leads and how to get there. I don’t know the rules yet, or what I will learn along the way, but I know that it will be all wrapped up in love. Hope. Courage. Grief. Resilience, and again.

Love. Hope. Courage. Grief. Resilience. And Joy. Who knew?