It is not a virtue to Suffer. It is not a sin to be Happy.

I'm Catholic, so I come by guilt naturally. My parents did a bang up job at instilling a strong Catholic guilt in me and it worked like a charm every time. My dad could look at me with a stern and questioning look, and I would instantly burst into tears and divulge any knotty thing I've ever done. He was a pro! A talent I jokingly aspire to obtain some day.

Weeks after I lost my dad I remember feeling great guilt the first time I laughed. I instantly felt bad for feeling happy. How stupid is that? My dad was one of the funniest people I knew. He would want me to have joy and be happy. But life is this crazy, complicated mess of obligations we put on our selves. We feel obligated to sit in our own mourning, to some how prove how much our loved one meant to us. The sadder we appear, the more we loved them.

I am not naturally someone who has ever had bouts of depression. My mother viewed life like there was sunshine wrapped around us at all times, even the hard times. She taught us to see goodness in everything, in every experience. So when my parents passed I was sad, but I wasn't perpetually sad. I still had an amazing husband and two kids that had joy spewing out of them all the time. I couldn't stop living, I had to keep on truckin.

I think people are right, death does change you. But you are in charge of how it makes you different. For example, I no longer feel obligated to feel the way others think I should. It took me a while. I remember being overly playful in the grocery store with my two kids when I bumped into a friend of my mothers a month after her passing. Instantly that lady made me feel bad, about being happy, like I wasn't honoring my mom. I had to consciously shake myself out of that feeling of guilt.

The reason I have chosen this path, to not live in perpetual sorrow is very simple. My children deserve the best me. A mom that is present in every moment. My husband deserves a wife that is a partner, not someone he has to take care of because I'm sad. But maybe the thought that changed me the most, is that when I am my happiest self I feel the closest to my parents. Now we all have our own beliefs about the ever after, heaven, the spirit world, and I am not trying to persuade anyone in a particular direction. I just know, that for me, I feel my parents presence the most when my children are laughing, my husband is teasing me, and we are sharing new and wonderful experiences with our kids.

That is why I believe, it is not a virtue to suffer, and it is not a sin to be happy. Stop feeling guilty!