Learning to Hold Joy Without Losing Myself
It’s possible to celebrate someone’s clarity while still finding your own.
An Art of Drinking Water reflection · 5 minute read
There was a time when my family’s happiness felt complicated in my body.
Not because I wasn’t proud—
I was. Deeply.
But because joy, when it wasn’t shared evenly, can awaken a quiet ache.
They were celebrating milestones.
Big ones.
The kind that gather people around tables and invite speeches and photos and certainty about the future.
I showed up smiling.
Clapping.
Meaning every word of congratulations I offered.
And still, something in me felt unsteady.
I learned that it’s possible to be genuinely happy for someone
and quietly grieving your own unanswered questions at the same time.
We don’t talk enough about that tension.
About loving your family fiercely while standing in a season that feels directionless.
About celebrating their clarity while you’re still searching for your way back home—to yourself, to purpose, to solid ground.
I thought this meant I was selfish.
But it didn’t.
It meant I was human.
Being happy for someone else doesn’t require erasing your own longing.
It asks for honesty, not comparison.
What changed things for me was learning how to hold joy without using it as a mirror.
Their success didn’t mean I was failing.
Their progress didn’t mean I was behind.
Their certainty didn’t cancel my becoming.
Water taught me this.
Water doesn’t resent the river that moves faster.
It doesn’t shame the stream that found its path sooner.
It keeps flowing in the way it knows how—at its own pace, in its own shape.
Then there were the other moments.
The quieter ones.
When the celebration ended and someone I loved felt lost.
When achievements stopped providing answers.
When confidence thinned and questions returned.
That’s when I learned the second part of this lesson.
Being there for family doesn’t always mean cheering.
Sometimes it means sitting with them when they don’t recognize their own lives anymore.
When success didn’t bring peace.
When the map they followed stopped working.
I didn’t rush them.
Didn’t offer solutions.
Didn’t remind them of how far they’d come.
I stayed.
I listened without needing them to be impressive.
I loved them without needing them to be certain.
I held space for the version of them that didn’t know what was next.
And in doing that, something softened in me too.
I realized I wasn’t behind.
I was learning a different skill.
How to celebrate without shrinking.
How to support without fixing.
How to trust that everyone’s path—mine included—curves in ways that can’t be compared honestly.
Family teaches us how to practice this kind of love.
The kind that doesn’t compete.
The kind that doesn’t keep score.
The kind that believes everyone finds their way home eventually—even if the routes look nothing alike.
Now, when I stand beside my family in moments of joy, I let it be pure.
And when I stand beside them in moments of confusion, I let it be quiet.
Both matter.
Both are love.
And learning to hold them together—
pride and patience, celebration and steadiness—
has been one of the most grounding lessons of my life.
Like water finding its way through many paths,
we are not meant to arrive at the same time.
We are meant to stay connected.
And that—
that is how we find our way back home, together.