Rosenna Bakari

The world lost a great human last week, Stephen tWitch Boss. The news brought me great sadness. Yet, I have nothing to say about the loss of the great dancer and entertainer who died by suicide.

Rather than pondering why anyone makes a fatal decision about life, I want to raise issues about how the rest of us live our lives. There is a difference between being alive and living.

Being alive is surviving by reacting to real and assumed threats. There is evidence of conflict, defensiveness, and resistance to things that are different. Some people do little living while they are alive. All they do is survive.

Life is Joyful

Life is joyful when living. But displays of joy seem sparse these days. I observe the absence of joy on social media posts, at events and meetings, and going about daily life. Moreover, I lived many years without joy in my life.

The absence of joy breeds conflict, gossip, betrayal, and the obsessive pursuit of validation. You cling to what makes you happy in the absence of joy, denying the difference.

Boundaries become an emotional prison because you restrict your movement in the world. You shrink yourself to fit in until you feel invisible.

No one can see you. So, your needs are met by (fearfully) clinging to the one thing that makes you happy. Maybe it’s your career, your children, or your lover. You love it more than you love yourself.

You perform for your job title, marital title, or family title. Yet, no degree of success matters when you feel invisible. Wealth and achievement make you feel less seen when you commit to a life of performance.

My Absence of Joy

I had a happy life with a great husband and two beautiful children. I loved spending time with family and friends and enjoyed my career as a college professor. In my 2018 memoir, “Too Much Love Is Not Enough,” I wrote about my performative living and my thoughts of suicide.

Alongside happiness was my demon of shame from being a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. Honestly, I was more ashamed that my family didn’t seem to care.

Choosing to maintain close relationships with the violators over supporting my healing hurt more than the egregious violations. Family members asked for my silence, and I internalized shame.

“If I’m not worth saving by my own family, I must be worth nothing. If my family doesn’t value the way I feel, no one will. If my family chooses violators over me, I must be the bad person.” I navigated the world with those beliefs.

Out of desperation, I finally put those beliefs to the test by living openly. I began talking about my experience of being a survivor and invited the world to support me in my healing through advocacy work. I found compassion beyond belief and my voice that I thought was lost forever.

I helped other survivors find their voices. Over time, I realized that survivors of childhood sexual abuse were not the only adults who had lost their voice and joy.

Messages that Deny Joy

Many adults carry messages from childhood that steal their joy. They spend their lives trying to fit squares into round holes. They live with outdated notions about themselves and their environments that helped them navigate their world as a child but are impairments in the adult world.

We try to make our adult lives fit the childhood beliefs that helped us survive. The problem is that surviving is mental programming based on victimization. It requires distortions about yourself, others, and the world.

Survival distortions create hypersensitivity, and having a hypersensitivity to criticism steals joy. Everything feels personal.

When others are happy with you, you are happy. When anyone is unhappy with you, you are unhappy.

If you live your life by the whims of others, that triggers depression, and you will never know joy.

Many people enter adulthood too disempowered to experience joy. They carry ideals of extreme responsibility to achieve, perform, conform, comfort, or protect.

They must understand they have a right to exist without specific responsibility to avoid being imprisoned by their identity. Imprisoned people feel like they have no need to live if they cannot fulfill their role or identity.

Happy about My Joy

I now appreciate all the happiness that comes to me, like earning new business, receiving accolades from colleagues, and traveling. I accept these moments from a place of joy, meaning I don’t get attached to them.

I don’t respond to happiness by obsessively pursuing more of it. I live from a place of joy.

I express my joy when I perform uplifting poetry, wake up with the desire to run 5 miles, and hold space for people to come face-to-face with their pain.

My joy also allows me to seek understanding when I’m insulted or disappointed instead of lashing out. My joy is never threatened by anyone’s reaction.

You’ll Know It

If you have never experienced joy, you may not know what you are looking for. It’s like trying to describe what vision is to someone who has been born blind. But once you experience joy, you will open your heart wider than you ever thought possible.

Around the age of 40, women’s bodies begin to change. Most women, at some point, will ask another woman about hot flashes. The answer is always the same. “When you have one, you’ll know.”

There’s no mistaking the sudden overheating, overpowering sensation of internal body temperature suddenly rising inconsistent with the room’s temperature.

There are other experiences for which words cannot suffice. You may not be able to describe the color blue, but you know it when you see it. The taste of water is difficult to describe, but you can distinguish it from vinegar.

Joy is an experience beyond words. It is an internal dwelling that is sacred. It offers comfort and safety, allowing you to navigate the world unencumbered by fear. Still, this description falls short of the sense of peace joy unveils in your life.