The Day Joy Found Me Again

My Faux French Life

I wasn't looking for joy that afternoon. Honestly, I had stopped expecting it.

I sat in a folding chair in a school auditorium - the kind with fluorescent lights and programs printed on cardstock - and I watched my granddaughter walk to the center of the stage alone.

And then she danced.

I don't know exactly when the tears started. What I know is that something in my chest that had been locked shut for a very long time suddenly opened. I felt it - joy. Real, rushing, unmistakable joy. And right behind it, love. And right behind that,

something I hadn't felt in so long I'd almost forgotten it’s name.

Connection. To life. To myself.

If you're reading this, I think you might know what it feels like to lose that connection.

Maybe your body stopped cooperating. Maybe your role changed - as a professional, a mother, a woman who had always been the strong one.

Maybe you woke up one day and realized you couldn't remember the last time you felt something purely, simply, good.

I've been been there. I know that place.

And I want you to know - joy doesn't always come back the way you expect it to. It doesn't arrive with a plan or an announcement.

Sometimes it comes in a darkened auditorium.

Sometimes it comes in the spin of a little girl who has no idea she just gave her grandmother back to herself.

The French have a philosophy I return to again and again - this quiet, beautiful insistence on living. Not just getting through the day. Not just managing. Actually living.

My motto - the one woven into everything I do here - is n'oublie pas de vivre.

Don't forget to live.