Kindling Light Without Denying the Dark.

I haven’t always been a positive person.

For a long time, happiness felt out of reach. I grew up with depression and anxiety and have lost people I love in ways that change how you view things.

So please know when I talk about being positive, I’m not talking about pretending life is easy. I’m talking about something I had to practice.

I want to start off saying being positive doesn’t mean you ignore grief, anxiety, sadness, or trauma.

Even when you are positive you still have hard days. This doesn’t mean you can’t be grateful because you feel grief or can’t think life is beautiful because you feel pain. Real positivity isn’t denial and doesn’t ask you to erase your pain, it asks you to make room for something besides pain.

When I was younger and even as a young adult I struggled to see the point in life. Sometimes these feelings came from hard things in life I was going through and other times I had no “reason” to be unhappy, but I was anything but happy.

I feel like a lot of us, speaking from even personal experience, we just expect we should be happy or one day it will fall into our laps. Happiness was something I had to learn and practice. It didn’t feel natural at first, but I had to train myself to notice the small moments.

I don’t fully agree when people say happiness is a choice. Some days your grief is too heavy, or your anxiety is too loud. Some days your nervous system does not feel safe, and you can’t simply “choose” to turn these things off.

What I can do is practice small things that help me return to myself and so can you. So, what I’m saying is I don’t think happiness is always a choice, but it can be practiced!

Theres a few ways I practice happiness and retuning to myself.

The first and my favorite is romanticizing my everyday life and looking for small things every day that add up and make me happy. I call these “sparkles”. “Sparkles” help keep me grateful for things I can take advantage of. One of my favorites is my morning call with my mom and my cup of coffee/tea in the morning. I do these everyday and it can be easy to start seeing it as routine and stop being grateful for it. But for me I’m grouchy and upset without my coffee or tea and I don’t know what I will do one day without my mom. These small things that are easy to take advantage of are my “sparkles” and these are small things that make my life better and bring me joy when I just learn to pay attention.

Other ways I practice happiness are writing down things that I’m grateful for every day, saying no to things I would have said yes to only because I feel obligated not because I want to go, spending less time comparing myself to others, and self-care.

I feel like some of these seem so obvious, yet a lot of us don’t practice these things and let them go.

For me self-care can be a big one. I let myself go sort of speak after I had my son. I went from full face of makeup and hair done every day to doing none of it, not ever wanting to shave my legs because it’s tedious to me. But these are things that once I started doing them again I felt more confident and happy, because I felt good on the outside. I still don’t wear makeup every day and I don’t mind how I look without it, but I will say the days I practice self-care or putting in a little effort to look what I deem as pretty, then I feel like a bombshell and that makes my whole day elevated.

For me practicing happiness became part of intentional living, not about becoming perfect, but learning to be present and participate in my own life again. This is going to look different for everyone, just find the little things that are easy to forget or take advantage of.

Now when suffering with grief like I recently have been in life, it can make happiness feel complicated. I sometimes feel guilty for being happy and moving forward with my life. We have to remind ourselves that feeling joy doesn’t dismiss a person’s memory, laughing doesn’t mean I’m not sad, and healing doesn’t mean ill forget. Joy doesn’t erase the love I have; it helps me keep living with it.

Now something to ask yourself is “Am I feeding the version of me that wants to heal, or the version of me that wants to give up?” We tend to consume a lot these days, remember what you consume affects your mindset, who we spend time with matters, and so does our inner dialogue. Comparing ourselves to others, watching negative content, I hate to say it but listening to sad music all the time, these things can pull you down. Constant negativity in your life WILL pull you down.

I believe happiness is less about having a perfect life and more about learning how to find the lighting inside an imperfect one. I believe joy can be rebuilt, positivity can be practiced, and the small moments always matter. But you also really have to want it. Sadness and grief can be easy to feel comfortable in and you have to be okay with stepping away from it.

If happiness feels far away from you right now, don’t think you are failing. I encourage you to just start small. Look for one good thing today, write something you are grateful for, just let one small moment be enough for today. Happiness doesn’t arrive all at once. Sometimes it comes back slowly through the small ways we practice living. Keep noticing the small things, this creates the light.

Lastly, I want to say please don’t ever be ashamed to ask for help if you are in a bad place. If you ever need immediate support, call or text 988 in the U.S. to reach the suicide and crisis lifeline.

~ Love Katelyn, and as always if you took the time to read this thank you so much and if it resonates with you or could help someone you know please share this blog.