9d • General discussion
When Joy Feels Like Betrayal: The Quiet Guilt That Can Follow Grief
There’s a moment many grieving people don’t talk about.
It happens when you laugh, really laugh, for the first time after a loss. Or when you notice a flicker of lightness in your body. Or when, for a brief second, you realise you feel… okay.
And almost instantly, something tightens.
How can I feel this?
What does this say about my love?
Am I forgetting them?
This is joy guilt, the subtle, often unspoken belief that happiness during grief is a betrayal of the person we’ve lost.
The Psychology of Joy Guilt
Joy guilt is not a sign that you loved less. Quite the opposite. It usually shows up because you loved deeply.
When someone matters to us, our nervous system links love with suffering. Somewhere along the way, the mind absorbs the idea that pain equals loyalty, that staying heavy is how we prove devotion.
But grief doesn’t work in straight lines or moral rules.
Emotions Can and Do Coexist
One of the most important truths about grief is this:
Joy does not cancel grief. And grief does not forbid joy.
You can miss someone with your whole chest and still smile at a memory. You can feel the ache of absence and the warmth of connection in the same breath.
These emotions don’t take turns. They overlap.
Grief isn’t a single emotion, it’s a landscape. And joy sometimes appears in that landscape like sunlight breaking through cloud, not to erase the storm, but to help you breathe inside it.
Love Is Not Measured by Suffering
There is a quiet myth that lingers around loss: If I stop hurting, I stop loving.
But love was never meant to be proven through endurance of pain.
Staying in constant suffering is not a requirement for honouring someone’s life. Missing them deeply and laughing at a joke can exist in the same moment. One does not diminish the other.
Your capacity for joy is not a betrayal of your grief, it is evidence that love shaped you in ways that still live on.
Joy as Survival, Not “Moving On”
Many people fear that moments of happiness mean they are “moving on” or leaving someone behind.
But joy during grief is not about forgetting. It’s about surviving.
Those small moments of warmth, the sip of tea that comforts you, the song that lifts you, the unexpected giggle, these are not signs that the loss mattered less. They are the nervous system finding just enough safety to keep going.
Joy is not the opposite of grief.
Despair is.
And allowing moments of goodness is often what keeps grief from hardening into hopelessness.
In that sense, joy is a return to love, not a departure from it.
An Invitation: Resting in the Ache
Instead of judging yourself for what you feel, or don’t feel, try this gentle reflection.
The Absence Exercise
Take a quiet moment and ask yourself:
What do I miss most right now?
It might be:
• The sound of their laugh
• The way they used to say your name
• Or even a part of you, your old energy, ease, or sense of safety
Rather than distracting yourself or rushing to feel better, allow yourself to rest in the ache for a moment.
Notice where it lives in your body.
Notice its temperature, its weight, its movement.
You don’t need to fix it.
You don’t need to explain it.
Just let it be there, without story, without judgement.
Often, when we stop fighting grief, it softens just enough to let breath, and sometimes even tenderness, back in.
A Few Gentle Pieces of Advice
• Release the moral rules around emotions. Feelings are not promises or betrayals. They are responses.
• Let joy visit without interrogation. You don’t need to justify moments of lightness. Let them come and go.
• Talk about joy guilt out loud. Naming it often loosens its grip, especially in safe community.
• Remember, love is not erased by laughter. If anything, laughter often carries echoes of the love that came before.
Grief changes us, but it doesn’t exile us from joy forever.
You are allowed to feel the ache.
You are allowed to feel okay.
You are allowed to live and love at the same time.
And if you ever forget that, let this be your reminder;
Your heart can hold more than one truth at once.
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When Joy Feels Like Betrayal: The Quiet Guilt That Can Follow Grief
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