Listening to a Podcast About Joy Made Me Feel So Much Loss and Sadness

How Can Be?

At the beginning of the podcast, the speaker said to think of the times you felt joy in your life. I thought about my children when they were small and felt loss. I thought about how much my parents adored my children, and I felt the loss of my parents.

My favorite time in my life was when my children were babies to when they were eighteen. It was also a time when I had an excellent relationship with my parents. We planned so many things with the kids. We would even go on vacation with them so they could watch them, and my husband and I could get some time away.

I did not realize how sad I had been feeling. My children grew up; my father passed away twelve years ago; my mother is ninety-three with advanced-stage Alzheimer's disease. In addition, I had broken up with my significant other of twenty years.

I loved having a family. But now they were distant or gone. I felt such a loss come over me that I could not listen to the podcast about joy. As one gets older, sometimes we need to feel the losses before we start a new chapter and feel joy again.