We moved out of our last home almost a year ago. I’ve been thinking about these old front steps a lot lately, the memories of the kids standing here waiting for Daniel to pull into the driveway after work, the social worker parking on the road and walking up to the door with our first foster daughter (and me subsequently running away from the window, trying to play it cool)…
And I’ve been thinking about the times I sat here with my head in my lap, over-sized sweats covering all but my feet, praying and weakly pleading for the sun to help dry even a drop of the heartache I was drowning in.
Sitting here was one of the last things I could manage in trying to save myself from (my not-yet-diagnosed) PTSD’s stranglehold. I knew sunlight was supposed to be good for mental health. I’d heard vitamin D had something to do with mental health. I’d read something, somewhere that said sitting in the sun might help, so I tried using the sun, and these front steps, to heal some part of my broken heart and fragile mind.
(It’s true, by the way, and here is a little about why sunlight is good for your mental health)
Having grown up in Seattle I used to have this excitement for a sunny day, but now I find more comfort in clouds and downpours. In Utah though it seems it’s just sun, all the time sun. In the winter it snows and then there’s sun. During the summer it’s often cloudless skies.
Sunny days are overrated. The sun has no regard for pain or death. The sun says “carry on, everything is great, no reason to slow down” when everything feels like it should come to a hard stop.
Rain seems to force a slowdown. When you need the world to stop moving the rain says “this does suck, let’s slow down and take a beat while I make some white noise”.
I remember angrily cursing the sun for rising after Noah died. How dare the sun carry on without him here to enjoy it? The nerve. What an ass, that sun.
Anyway, the sun. It was free, it was right outside, and it was one of the last resources I could muster a weak reach for. One of the last deliberate efforts I could make to turn myself back in the right direction of living life again. I had little resolve to do anything…but I could sit on the front steps, pull up the legs of my sweatpants, and let the sun burn into my skin.
THIS is a big part of why I named the blog Jess Building Joy. It’s not about searching for joy, it’s about using what we have now to build and feel joy. It’s about sharing the human experience and the ways we can recognize and build joy in the everyday. Somewhere I read that the sun could help and clung to that. It helped me feel like I had another weapon in the battle I was fighting. I want to pass that on.
Let me be completely clear though, my life was saved by clinical and pharmaceutical intervention. That is not hyperbole. If it wasn’t for reaching out to my therapist and doctors (and them recognizing the situation and acting immediately) I know I wouldn’t be alive right now. PTSD and all its horrors would’ve literally ended my life. My PTSD and depression weren’t cured by sunshine and positive thinking, they were managed and slowly healed with therapy, medication, time, and the positive habits I could handle adding bit by bit as I gained strength while being kind and patient with my healing mind and soul.
I’ve been stable for over four years, and recovered from the depression for almost three. My PTSD is rarely triggered and very well managed, but will always be something I have to be mindful of and will have to continue working through probably for the rest of my life.
Another aspect I want to focus on is building joy in your family and communities you’re involved with (your neighborhood, your social group, your anything). All through my mostly silent battle I was lifted, strengthened, and sometimes dragged along by kindness and generosity in ways I never would’ve thought of myself. People helped in ways I didn’t even know to ask for. I was surrounded, and my wounds bound up, by charity and compassion I didn’t feel worthy of at the time. It was bewildering and inspiring. I want to pass that on.
I want to go back in time to the past Jessica who was clinging to life with no expectation of ever feeling joy again. I want to hold on tightly to the past Jessica who was just wanting to stop feeling so much pain and wanted it all to stop. I want to shake her and shield her and tell her joy is possible again, but I can’t. Thankfully she made it through. But I can reach out for you. I can write, I can put out every little bit of wisdom, anecdote, research, and experience, and daily life I have and hope it reaches the people it can impact. I can share the random, the silly, and the ridiculous just for fun. So that’s what I’ve resolved to do. For you, for the people you can affect, I will write to build joy.
Jess Building Joy 