My Complicated Relationship with the Word "Happy"

I have some complicated feelings about the word “happy.” This might sound like a strange confession from the woman who wrote a book called The Next Happy: Let Go of the Life You Planned and Find a New Way Forward , but stay with me. We need to unpack this.

Let’s start in childhood, where all the best origin stories begin. As a child, I curated a collection of stuffed animals so vast that making my bed required a fifteen-minute logistical exercise. I spent my post-bed-making fastidiously arranging and anthropomorphizing a "herd" that included Hootie the Owl, Judy the Monkey, and Leo the Lion. I lived in a state of constant fear, worrying that Eleanor the Elephant was slipping into an intractable ennui because she’d been displaced when Geoffrey the Giraffe joined the pack.

Despite the crowd, two figures held permanent court at the center of my canopy bed, a shrine draped in a polyester, daisy-print bedspread. The stars of the show were  always Poutsy the Bear and Happy.

Poutsy the Bear was a beige, balding creature who looked like he’d survived several rounds of chemo and a terrible loss. As his name implies, Poutsy was chronically miserable. His eyes were in a permanent closed wince, and his mouth was fixed in a grimace of existential pessimism.

Then there was Happy the Doll: a "fancy" Christmas gift. She was a beautiful, well-dressed, and expensive Madame Alexander doll—the kind you’re told to keep on a shelf so she doesn’t get "ruined" by actual love. I ignored those instructions immediately.

The irony? My parents, inexplicably, worshiped Poutsy. They thought this clinically depressed bear was the greatest thing they’d ever seen; Winnie the Pooh had nothing on the relatability of Poutsy’s despair.

Meanwhile, family members later told me that as a toddler, I notoriously woke up chirping, genuinely thrilled to have a new day. But in our house, that 'rise and shine' joy wasn’t appreciated. The atmosphere was such that no one seemed happy until I was made to cry. And so, the lesson was etched into my psyche: Being unhappy is the safer way to belong.

Fast forward thirty years. I wrote my first book under the working title “The Other Side of Impossible”. I loved that title. It was gritty; it was deep. So, naturally, when my publisher decided to title it “The Next Happy”, I was... well, not happy.

I resisted because, as a therapist, I’ve disabused many who believe that permanent happiness is the goal for a successful life. Far too many feel that if they aren’t vibrating with joy 24/7, they are fundamentally broken. I didn’t want my title to be mistaken for a guide to endless joy, when the book was actually about the difficult process of letting go of the life you planned when the plan fails to deliver.

The point my book made was that even when we have to let go of the "Plan A" life, happiness is still possible—along with meaning, satisfaction, and an enthusiasm for things you no longer put so much pressure on to be the source of your happiness.

We are often convinced that happiness only comes through one specific goal: the marriage, the baby, the job, the healing, the "thing" we want most. We think happiness is a reward for getting what we asked for. But I realized that on the other side of not getting what we wanted, on the other side of "impossible" grief or disappointment, something incredibly surprising was waiting: an unexpected happiness.

It wasn’t the manic or unrelenting brand of happiness we’re sold in toothpaste commercials. Instead, it was a happiness that only arrived once I allowed myself the full weight of my grief, my sadness, and my disappointment. It was the joy found in the act of letting go. It was an unexpected happiness that you might not have even imagined was possible while you were still white-knuckling the life you thought you had to have. It’s the happiness that finds you in the wreckage. The Next Happy wasn't a command to be cheerful; it was a promise that even when the first "happy" breaks, there is another one the other side.

The truth is, happiness is like cake: delicious, layered, and a total delight. But it is also ephemeral. If you ate nothing but cake, the magic would vanish; the sweetness would eventually become a source of nausea and/or cavities rather than joy.

A life lived solely on a diet of "Happy" is a life malnourished. It lacks the essential nutrients found in the "savory" parts of the human experience—the longing, the wistfulness, and even the righteous indignation.

As Alyssa Liu so brilliantly put it:

"I don't think we really want to be as happy as we say we want to be... We want to feel all the emotions, and we want to feel them deeply."

When I think about happiness, I’m not talking about that manic, "everything is fine!" brand of happiness. That’s just an untenable mask we wear until our faces and souls ache. I’m talking about the joy of self-discovery. I’m talking about a journey that includes the full, chaotic spectrum of the human experience. It’s a path that makes room for:

* The quiet stalls where nothing seems to move.

* The heavy, unadorned sadness of a Tuesday afternoon.

* The sharp sting of disappointment when life doesn't go to plan.

* The restlessness of wanting more and the vulnerability of not knowing how to get it.

* The envy that points toward our hidden desires, and the righteous indignation that tells us something needs to change.

These aren't "bad" feelings; they are the raw materials of depth and self-awareness. Finding "real and true" happiness allows for creating enough space for all of our feelings to exist. When we stop trying to stay on the "fancy shelf" like Happy the doll was supposed to be, prioritizing and idealizing happiness,rather than allowing ourselves to be as real, as messy, and perhaps as worn down as Poutsy, we find a satisfaction that actually lasts.

To me, that is what real happiness is: the hard-won capacity to hold it all. And I think Hootie the wise owl would agree with me.

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Note: The photos of Poutsy and Happy shown above aren’t my original childhood toys. Since I no longer have my originals, I found these nearly identical models being sold by someone else to provide a visual of the "friends" who shaped my early emotional world.