In the summer of 2023, my daughter and I went on a trip. It was our first big adventure on our own since Long Covid had redefined my life. Every detail was planned around my fragile energy: our sleeping places, the pace of our days, how often I’d need to stop and rest.
At first, I was terrified. What if I couldn’t keep up? What if I relapsed far from home? What if this attempt to enjoy life turned into yet another setback?
But as the days unfolded, something unexpected happened. Because we honored my limits, I began to relax into the trip. I found myself laughing again, joining in small adventures. Slowly, joy started seeping back in—not the exhausting joy of pushing through, but the quiet joy of simply being. And with that joy came a different kind of energy, one I hadn’t felt in years.
In the Vedic texts, joy is described as the natural state of the soul—sat-chit-ananda: being, consciousness, bliss. Yet after years of suffering, that brightness can feel almost too much to hold.
Then near the end of our trip, it all came crashing down. Someone close to me disregarded my boundaries, pulling on my energy reserves until they snapped. The relapse hit hard. Romania became the place where my body gave out.
Our return journey to the Netherlands turned into a nightmare of exhaustion, brain fog, and panic attacks as I lost my ability to think clearly. We even came close to being removed from a station by police—there was no space for me to rest, no one to guide us, and my overwhelmed mind couldn’t find a way forward.
Months later, the same person took legal action against me. The lawyer I trusted to help dismissed my limits completely. The stress pushed my body past breaking point again. I fainted. When I woke, I had a concussion.
What followed were three more months of forced rest on top of Long Covid and physical pain in my shoulder, neck, and arm that lingers to this day. New symptoms layered themselves onto the old ones.
It felt as if all my efforts—the careful steps I had taken to rebuild my health—were flushed down the drain in that single moment of losing consciousness.
But perhaps the deepest wound wasn’t physical. It was emotional. The fear of being judged by others who might catch a glimpse of me smiling in the sun, sipping coffee in a café, or laughing with my daughter. The fear that they would say: “See? She’s not sick at all.”
What they don’t see is the reality of life at home. Fun moments are rare because all my energy goes into living a holistically healthy life, caring for my daughter, and keeping up with basic chores. Emails and necessary appointments often wait six months or more for a response. Some never take place at all within that timeframe.
This is what makes joy so precious. It isn’t constant, but when it appears, it’s sacred.
Joy is like sunlight entering a darkened room. It shows us beauty but also the dust we didn’t notice before. Maybe that’s why it feels so vulnerable.
And sometimes, the fear of joy isn’t even ours. It’s woven into our lineage—generations taught to stay vigilant, to survive, to not get too comfortable in the light.
We often think healing is about escaping the darkness. But healing is becoming whole enough to hold both shadow and light—letting joy rise even as we tend to the tender parts of ourselves.
I’ve been following the ten principles of Radical Remission, a holistic approach to recovery researched by Dr. Kelly Turner. One of those principles is increasing positive emotions—like joy.
I’ve learned I need joy to keep the balance within all the struggles, to stay alive. Without it, life can easily become heavy, dark, and suffocating. Joy is what keeps my spirit from collapsing under the weight of pain and setbacks.
Joy doesn’t mean I’m cured. It means I’m human. It means I’m fighting to hold on to the parts of life that make it worth living.
Boundaries are not selfish. They are a sacred act of self-preservation. They are the fences that protect the tender garden of my energy, where joy can grow again.
To anyone reading this who feels afraid to live because of what others might think:
✨ Your healing is not for their approval. It’s for you. For your children. For the quiet mornings and laughter yet to come. For the joy in life that is still waiting for you—no matter how small or rare it may feel today.
💛 “I am worthy of joy. I am joy.”