Is It Just Me Or… Does Letting in Joy Leave Us With More To Give?

One afternoon during the summer, my dad asked me if I wanted to walk down to the beach. Over the years, whenever my brain has been playing tricks on me, a long walk and an honest talk has always helped pull me back to reality.

We strolled towards the water and sat on the concrete steps leading down to the sand. I watched strangers splashing in waves, playing games with plastic seaside toys, sunbathing and laughing at jokes I couldn’t hear. I felt a million miles away from them.

My depressed brain couldn’t understand how those people were allowing themselves to have fun, just for the sake of… having fun? How were they justifying it? Didn’t they know about all the terrible awful bad things happening in the world? How could they be out here, feeling joy?? Joy didn’t seem possible to me, and it definitely didn’t feel like something I deserved.

In those months I could’ve given you a hundred reasons why it wasn’t okay for me to be okay. Feeling like a piece of shit every day just seemed to make sense! After all, I hadn’t figured out how to fix the whole world. Or how to spend all of my energy helping others. Or how to only do good. So surely, I didn’t deserve to feel good. At least that’s what my brain told me.

Fast forward a handful of months and I still haven’t figured out how to do any of those things. I don’t think it’s possible for one person to figure them out alone. But what I do know, is that punishing myself didn’t help. Not allowing myself joy didn’t help. Blaming myself for things that are so much bigger than me didn’t help. In fact, the more I did that, the less I was able to give anything or anyone else.

As I recovered and slowly started to let a little bit of light in, it was immediately obvious to me how much more I had to give others. And nowhere did that show up more clearly than in my relationship with my sister.

I’ve been part of Gemma’s care team for about 10 years now, and within that time we’ve had all the ups and downs of any sibling relationship. I’ve also been through my fair share of mental health blips. And there’s no two ways about it: I am a worse carer and a worse sister when I am not taking care of myself.

When I show up for my shift already drained, stressed, anxious, internally beating myself up, believing I don’t deserve joy, neither of us are in for a great weekend. Gemma picks up how I feel and gets more tense. I can do the bare minimum to keep her okay and bring her some happiness but we both know I don’t have much to give. It is impossible to give out light that you don’t have.

On the other hand, if I show up rested, cared for, after a week of letting in joy and believing I deserve good things? The light I’m able to give to her multiplies by a million. My joy lights her joy, and her joy lights the world (or at least, a small subsection of the internet). Then, who knows where it goes!

And I’m realising that that’s how it works. Change has to start with changing the way we treat ourselves. Healing the parts that keep us in self-punishment. Cultivating our own light. Because if we don’t do that, how are we supposed to help the world? How are we supposed to do good if we won’t even let ourselves feel good? How are we supposed to give what we don’t have?

I think for a lot of us, it feels easier to stay in self-punishment. Maybe it’s how we’ve always been or maybe it’s what we’ve been taught that we deserve by others. But if punishing ourselves led to healing, we’d all be healed by now (and yes, you deserve healing, too).

I hope my brain never slips back into believing that I don’t deserve to feel the joy, not only because I can show up so much brighter in the world when I feel it, but because I deserve it simply for myself. Because I exist. Because I am here. And if you’re here too, the same goes for you.

Next summer I hope that I’m the person on the beach playing, laughing, letting in the sunshine and not doubting whether I deserve it. I hope we all let ourselves feel every drop of joy we can get, and then we’ll see how much more we have to give.

With love,

M

💜