Finding Happy When You Are Feeling Sad

No one likes to feel sad. Sadness is like a gray cloud hovering over our head. Sometimes we can do like the Taylor Swift song says and Shake It Off. Other times we experience such deep levels of anguish that it feels like the cloud over our heads just started pouring rain and won’t stop. We may even feel like we will never be happy again.

That’s how I felt after the death of my mother in 1990. I didn’t think I would ever smile or laugh again. I struggled with depression and for a time it felt like I was in a deep, dark pit that I couldn’t escape no matter how hard I tried. Eventually the pain eased and so did the depression. The sadness that washed over me in tidal waves was gradually replaced by happy memories as the visual images of her sickness faded. I was able to feel happiness again and my life returned to normal, but it took years.

Now I find myself struggling again with finding the happy.

I have a cousin, Martha, who is like a sister to me and she has cancer (how I hate that word). In 1994 she was diagnosed with breast cancer and since then she’s been through a lumpectomy, mastectomy, chemotherapy (3 times) and radiation. She’s lost her hair and lost weight, but she’s never lost her faith.

Watching her battle with cancer for decades has been like watching a boxing match go 50+ rounds. No matter how many times she gets knocked down, she keeps getting back up and every time she does I wonder how someone can keep going after taking such a beating. Why won’t the referee just declare her a winner and send cancer to the corner where it belongs?

Another Sucker Punch

One of the things I hate most about cancer is that just when you get one symptom taken care of another one rears its ugly head. Martha just got back from Chicago where she had radiation spheres injected into the arteries connected to her liver to try and kill the tumors that are growing there.

She lives in Florida and I live in Kentucky so she and her husband stopped by our house and spent the night with us on the way to Chicago and then again on the way back. Understandably she didn’t feel very good after the treatment so we took it easy, watched television and talked while she rested on the couch. We joked about her eyesight because she was having trouble reading text messages on her phone. We just assumed she needed new glasses or that she had cataracts.

When she and her husband got back home to Florida she went to visit with her oncologist and while she was there she mentioned to him she was having problems with her vision. He scheduled an MRI and a few days later called her with the news that she now has cancer in her brain. Soon she will start 5 days of radiation for 5 weeks.

Why can’t she catch a break? I feel so frustrated, helpless and mad, but most of all I just feel sad.

How can I pull myself out of this funk I am in so that I can be the friend she needs and support her? How can I function when all I want to do is sit in my basement and cry? How can I find happy when I’m smack-dab in the middle of sad?

Getting Past the Tears

When Martha called me to tell me that she now has cancer in her brain we cried together and I have been crying off and on ever since.

Today I received a text from Martha’s daughter with a picture of Martha playing cards at her mother’s house. She was smiling and obviously having a good time. One of the most amazing things about Martha (besides her faith) is her ability to search for the happy.

That doesn’t mean she won’t feel sad again but she’s deliberating choosing to find some moments of happiness and if she can do it, I know I can too. To a certain extent, happiness is a choice no matter what the circumstances are. I can either sit in my basement alone and cry or I can get up off my rear end and go do something….anything to try and find some happy.

Darkness or Light

My 10 year old granddaughter has been here visiting this weekend and it was time for her to go home. I could have asked my husband to take her but I didn’t. I drove her home and on the way there she turned the radio up to sing a long with a silly country song she likes. I made myself sing along with her and was rewarded with her sweet smile. That smile was like a little ray of sunshine in a sky filled with storm clouds.

During periods of darkness in our lives we have to search for the light. It’s always there but at times we may have to get out a magnifying glass to see it. The light (or happy) isn’t shined in our eyes like the bright lights of an oncoming car, we have to search for it in the corners and crevices. It’s like the flower that finds a crack in the side walk and blooms. The flower’s beauty is there for the world to see but if we are focused solely on getting where ever we are going we may not see the flower at all.

Most often we find the happy through others. Either by sharing something with them (even a smile) or doing something for them. When we stop thinking about our own problems and realize that everyone is struggling with something, we can get our minds off ourselves and create a light in their darkness. Whether it’s taking them a meal so they don’t have to cook, or sending a card to let them know we are thinking of them: doing something is always better than doing nothing. Everyone needs a helping hand. Everyone needs a little light in this cold, dark and often uncaring world.

What I Believe

I read a blog that is written by a woman whose son overdosed on drugs and died at the age of 21. Her life was forever changed in that instant, but like everyone else who has ever faced great tragedy, she had to find a way to go on. Her posts focus on seemingly tiny, insignificant things where she finds a moment of joy. Maybe it’s stopping to look at a field of wildflowers on the side of the road and feeling a cool breeze ruffle her hair. Maybe it’s playing fetch with her dog. The point is that she stops and mediates on whatever it is that brought her pleasure….even if it only lasts a second.

And that’s how I believe we human beings keep plugging along when life keeps throwing us sucker punches. We have to learn to recognize happy when we see it, no matter how fleeting or small it may be.

I choose to believe that happy still does exist, even in the middle of sad. I will look for it. I will search for it. And if I have to I will fight for it because just like Martha, I know that finding the happy is what makes this thing we call life worthwhile.