When I was 29 years old, my mother died. It was completely unexpected; she was only 61. In an instant, decades of plans disappeared. Going through birth with her calm presence beside me. Her spoiling my children with stuff they shouldn't have. Christmases together, full of music and friends - a vibrant, perfectly manicured event every time. An all-knowing guru advising me through the challenges of being a wife, a mother, a professional.
In the years since, I've had to cope with a completely different future than the one I'd planned. I gave birth with a doula beside me, not my mother. My husband and I are raising my daughter alone, and we're doing it well. Christmas is a small, quiet event spent at home with just our immediate family; there's no music, no bustling household, no presents by her crackling fireplace. At the time she died, I thought I'd never manage, but today, I have recreated my life to work without her in it, and it does just that -- it works. When I don't know what to do, I take my best guess and press onward. I have survived. Remarkably, I am happy.
How did this happen? As a researcher who studies happiness, I have spent a long time thinking about how it is possible for me to be happy today. The answer, as it turns out, lies in research about emotion, and what function various emotions - positive and negative -- serve for us. Negative emotions make us focus; at the time of my mother's death, my loss was all I could think about. There was no big picture of how I would be okay in the long run. There was no perspective. Little by little, though, as time passed, I was able to gain some of that perspective, and I remember the moment when that process began.
[For more of this story, written by Acacia Parks, go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...redie_b_7283468.html]
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