By Karen Perks
What We Show vs. What We Feel
There’s that kind of smile that doesn’t quite reach the eyes. I’ve worn it more times than I can count, that quiet mask we slip on to tell the world, “I’m fine,” when we’re anything but. In a culture that rewards resilience and rushes grief, we learn to perform wellness even as we quietly break inside.
Behind my own smile, I’ve stood at my daughter Mikayla’s bedside through countless seizures – her body overwhelmed, lost in the noise of clinical uncertainty. I smiled for her, for myself, and for those who didn’t know what to do with my sorrow. That smile was not a lie, it was survival. This is a reflection on the nuanced space where joy, happiness and grief collide, and how we often confuse one for the other.
Defining the Concepts
We live in a world obsessed with being happy. It’s stitched into advertising slogans, baked into Instagram captions, and sold as the end goal of every product and program. Smile more. Be grateful. Manifest joy. And don’t get me wrong, gratitude is powerful. Positivity has its place. But when happiness becomes a performance, a metric, a way to prove you’re okay… it starts to feel more like a trap than a gift.
Joy, though, is something else. It lives beneath the surface. It isn’t about a moment going right, it’s about meaning rising from the mess. I’ve felt joy, it didn’t cancel the fear or fatigue, but it anchored me. It reminded me that even in pain, something beautiful could still take root.
The Emotional Masking of Grief
Grief is the master of disguise. It can look like competence, like humour, like determination. For me, it often looked like a woman who had it all together, making phone calls, coordinating doctors, holding the family steady. People called me strong. Few saw the quiet unravelling underneath. That’s what we don’t talk about, how grief becomes invisible when we get too good at hiding it.
And yet, in some moments, joy sneaks in like light through a crack. At my mum’s funeral, someone told a story that made the whole room erupt in laughter. It was pure, unfiltered, and for a moment, we all breathed differently. That laugh wasn’t a betrayal of our grief, it was a tribute to her spirit.
The Paradox of Coexisting Emotions
We’re taught to think of feelings as linear: you’re sad, then you heal. You’re broken, then you mend. But real life doesn’t move in straight lines. I’ve cried while reading bedtime stories. I’ve smiled in waiting rooms. I’ve laughed during heartbreak.
One of the most powerful depictions of this comes from the film Inside Out. Emotions are personified with Joy trying desperately to keep things light, Sadness being treated like a nuisance. But the truth that emerges is profound: Sadness isn’t the enemy. She’s necessary. She brings empathy, connection, truth. Joy learns to step aside and in that, healing begins.
That’s what I’ve come to believe: our emotional lives aren’t about choosing one feeling over another. They’re about honoring the chorus and letting each voice speak, even when they seem to contradict.
The Cost of Emotional Suppression
There’s a high cost to pretending. The more I performed happiness, the less people checked in. Eventually, even I stopped asking myself what I was really feeling. My grief didn’t disappear it just sank deeper, showing up as fatigue, as tension in my shoulders, as silence when I needed words.
And then there’s the ache of invisible grief when you’re surrounded by people yet feel profoundly alone. Because they see the smile. They hear the laugh. And they think you’re okay. And maybe that’s what hurts most being unseen in plain sight.
Healing Through Authenticity
Sometimes, we keep chasing happiness not because it’s close but because slowing down would force us to feel what we’ve been avoiding. The sadness. The loneliness. The grief we never gave enough time.
Stillness is terrifying when you’ve built your life around momentum. If we stop chasing, we might have to admit we’re lost. So, we keep going smiling, performing, ticking boxes hoping the feeling will eventually catch up.
But real happiness doesn’t come from the chase. It comes from the pause.
Healing didn’t come when the crises ended, it came when I allowed myself to feel them fully. To say, “I’m not okay,” and trust that it didn’t make me weak. I had to unlearn the idea that being strong meant being silent.
When I began telling the truth to myself and to others something shifted. People met me there. Conversations became softer, deeper, more honest. Vulnerability stopped being something to avoid, it became the bridge to connection. And joy? It started returning in new ways. Not as a reward for being okay, but as a companion to all that was still tender.
When Joy Is Real and Still Includes Grief
I’ve laughed with Mikayla on days filled with uncertainty. I’ve seen friends dance barefoot at memorials, crying and celebrating in the same breath. That is joy – not the absence of grief, but its cohabitant. Its shadow and its light.
Grief changed how I see the world. It made ordinary moments sacred. The warmth of sunlight on skin. A familiar voice on the phone. The quiet exhale when you realize you’ve made it through the day. These aren’t small things anymore they are everything.
I’m not grateful for the grief. But I am grateful for how it widened my heart. For how it deepened my empathy. For how it taught me to stay present even in pain.
The Truth We Carry
Joy is not the opposite of sorrow. And happiness isn’t proof of healing. Both can exist while the ache still lingers. Our smiles might hide parts of us but sometimes they also hold the whole story, stitched together with grief, laughter, memory, and love.
Maybe the goal isn’t to be whole in the way we once were. Maybe it’s to carry the truth, all of it, and still move forward with tenderness. I no longer believe happiness is a destination. It’s not something you earn by being productive or positive. It’s something that flows, in and out, when you start living in alignment with your truth.
We don’t need to chase happiness to prove we’re whole. Sometimes, the bravest thing we can do is stop running… and listen.
Because beneath the noise, we might just find a quiet kind of joy, the kind that doesn’t need to be chased at all.
