I’m Happy and I Miss Her: Learning to Let Joy In Without Feeling Like I’m Cheating on My Grief

People talk a lot about the sadness of grief.
They don’t talk about the guilt that comes when you feel… anything else.

For me, joy has been the hardest emotion to let back in. Not anger, not loneliness, not the hollow, aching missing. Those I know how to hold, they make sense, they belong to the world where my daughter died.

But joy?
Joy feels like stepping onto a trapdoor.

I can be laughing with Zac, or sitting in the sun noticing that Wellington has finally turned on a beautiful day, or watching a stupid movie that gets a smile out of me, and right on cue, the guilt slams into my ribs.

You’re happy.
Will she think you’ve moved on?
Will she think you’re okay with her dying?

It happens every time.
A good moment arrives, and I instinctively reach for that tether:
“I miss you, bub.”
Just in case she can see me.
Just in case she thinks I’m not thinking of her.
Just in case she mistakes my laughter for forgetting.

It’s ridiculous and human and heartbreaking all at once - this superstition of love.
This belief that joy is disloyal.
That happiness sends the wrong message upwards or outwards or wherever she is now.

And yet… there’s another truth I’m trying to grow into. A harder one.

I can be happy and I can miss her.
I can laugh and I can hurt.
I can feel the sun and wish she was here to feel it too.

It doesn’t have to be a “but.”
But shuts the door.
But says one emotion replaces another.

Joy and grief aren’t opposites - they’re neighbours.
They live beside each other inside the same chest.
On the same day.
Sometimes in the same breath.

Learning this has been a slow, awkward training process.
Not spiritual, not polished, literal retraining.

When joy shows up, my brain panics:
She’ll think you don’t love her.
She’ll think you’re over it.
She’ll think you don’t miss her.

I have to gently, and sometimes not-so-gently remind myself:
The missing doesn’t go.
It never goes.
Joy doesn’t erase it.
Joy grows around it.

And if there is any version of her that can see me, I don’t believe for a second she’d want me to stay miserable just to prove my love.
I don’t believe she’d want my life to be one long monument to pain.

I think - on my brave days, she’d want what I want for her:
peace, freedom, and love.

I think she’d want me to breathe.
To live.
To feel something good without panicking that I’m betraying her.

It’s still hard.
I won’t pretend otherwise.
Joy still feels like a room I’m scared to walk into… in case she thinks I’ve closed the door behind her.

But I keep trying.
I keep practising the “and.”

I’m happy today, and I miss her.
I’m finding light again, and I wish she was here.
I’m learning to let joy in, and my grief still has a place at the table.

Both can be true.
Both are true.

And if you’re in the thick of grief, wondering if you’re allowed to feel anything good again, hear this:

Joy isn’t a betrayal.
Joy isn’t moving on.
Joy isn’t forgetting.
Joy is survival.
Joy is love in another form.
Joy is your heart saying, “I’m still here.”

You’re not cheating on your grief.
You’re carrying it forward.
With every laugh, every sunrise, every tiny bit of goodness that makes your chest lift instead of sink.

You’re allowed to feel joy and still miss them with your whole heart.

That’s not disloyalty.
That’s love, learning to breathe again.