How to Protect Your Joy No Matter What Life Throws Your Way

by Rebecca Chopp

If you have read my book, Still Me: Accepting Alzheimer’s without Losing Yourself, you may remember the story with which I close the book.

My son and I are traveling back to Denver from Atlanta. At the Atlanta airport, I decide I need to purchase some headphones. The clerk hurries me over to the counter for the headphones, and after I describe what I need them for, she hustles me, efficiently, to the counter. I pay for the headphones, and we walk away. About 50 feet from the counter, out of the blue, she shouts out to me as if both a gift and a commandment, “Don’t let anyone steal your joy.”

That story is more important to me than ever. I am now on a journey to become a joy expert, a joy maker, a joy ambassador. After all, Alzheimer’s disease is a joy killer, a killjoy, a suffocation of all the yeses in life. The one with Alzheimer’s loses their memories, loses their ability to reason, loses control of bodily functions. The world shrinks; it stalls.

For the caregiver, the world is now occupied with medicine, feedings, trying to give baths, trying to make sense of it all, trying to survive while constantly giving out—worn down, only to repeat it all again tomorrow or worse. The opposite of having a baby who learns day by day to recognize you, this motherly role (held by anyone) is about having someone who gradually forgets you or confuses you with a brother, an aunt, a mother.

More than ever, now is the time to build the capacity for joy in this journey. Joy and sorrow are intertwined in human life, and neither one needs to snuff out or drown the other. Joy makes suffering both sweeter and more tolerable; suffering means that joy is more precious and “larger” than it might be. We don’t need to work on suffering—it lurks, it visits often, it expands. But we, or at least I, do need to work on having joy.

Joy, I think, is like a treasure we can build, a practice we can get better at. I have a collection of my mother’s pins; they bring me joy. Occasionally, I take them out of their box. They are costume jewelry from the 1950s, colored glass pretties that she was able to “win” from purchasing things from the milkman. They gave her and give me joy. I build my capacity for joy by embracing nature. Living in the mountains, I walk daily and touch the trees, the grasses, the rocks. I try every day to “see” better—to watch the mountains change with the seasons, to follow my dog’s nose as he finds new layers of scents in his excitement. I practice joy avidly, both in remembering and in engaging.

Since childhood, I have had a baby-blue jewelry box filled with treasures of joy. I am determined to make it larger and add to it. Not every joy will come with a tangible item, but some will. Perhaps I will write the others on small cards and store them in my treasure box of joy jewels.

Joy for me is the bliss of abiding, even for a moment. It is the sheer transcendence of love—the love of creation, the love my mother had for beauty, my husband’s love when he cuddles me, my love of movement. Joy engages—the hard coolness of the stone, the sappy bark of the tree, the newfound joy of the taste of bison.

We need to practice joy. We need to build a huge treasure house in our souls. We need to share joy. Joy brings us through the dark night; it is the little light that can keep us going, the sense of the “yes” no matter how rough things get.

Some tips to start building your treasure house right now:

1. Though joy arrives unexpectedly in new ways, identify what has given you joy and what gives you joy. Write it down, paint it, find symbols of it, keep a joy journal, create a treasure box. Seriously. Build your treasure box now. Have fun with it, and fill it. Be intentional about what gives you joy.

2. Practice being joyful. Every day, make sure you feel sheer joy for five minutes. Be intentional! Maybe it is looking at something from your past that triggers joy (my mother’s jewelry). Maybe it is a playlist of all your favorite “joy” songs. Maybe it is keeping that piece of special cookie or candy that makes you remember joy, or maybe it is stepping into new joys. Practice. Emotions like joy need intentional work. Build your capacity for joy. Joy may be pleasurable, but for those on the Alzheimer’s journey, joy is the serious work of warriors.

3. Send joy into the world. The more you give it away, the more your treasure grows. The other day, I received a handmade card from a former student—someone I haven’t seen in 25 years. Oh, that card is bringing me joy. She sent joy into the world. I used to hurry down the street, busy with lots on my mind. Now I walk slower, and with the warmest smile and friendliest voice, I wish people a good day. Send joy—think of all the ways you can do this. Prayers and vibes of joy count too.

   
   

A lot of things can steal our joy in this disease, in our lives in general, and in the world. Too many times, I have let someone or something steal my joy. But no longer—because I know that joy that is identified, practiced, and stored grows stronger, takes root deep in the soul, and is always present to be called upon.

Joy can abide in us so deeply that no one can steal it away.