When my husband died, my sister and I drove his ashes to Oregon, where we were going to bury him next to his father. My sister hadn’t seen the Oregon coast since we were preteens, so we decided to route the trip along the water so she could see it again.
So there we were, visiting the place where we got married and the place where we honeymooned, standing out on the beach. And it was a nice time. It’s hard not to enjoy yourself on a beach with your sister.
At the same time, I felt horrible. I felt like a lousy wife. Here I was carrying my husband’s ashes to his funeral, and I was enjoying myself.
I think so many of us beat ourselves up this way. We judge ourselves because we’ve absorbed a mistaken idea that grief and joy can’t coexist, that we’re either one or the other. In The Grief App, we’ve worked hard to normalize the opposite: the two can live together. In fact, they should.
You can’t be in grief all the time
Grief is physically, emotionally, and mentally draining. It will wear you down if you never get a break from it. You need moments of levity, because that’s when you recharge and rebuild.
Think about a bodybuilder. No one can lift weights constantly. They have to rest so their muscles can rebuild. Marathoners run marathons, but then they recover. The race doesn’t go on day after day after day. Yet when we grieve, we ask ourselves to do what professional athletes never do: never take a break.
Allowing yourself to feel light again isn’t a betrayal. It’s the release you need, and you don’t have to feel guilty about it.
And here’s the important part: taking a break doesn’t mean you’re finished grieving. Grief will find you again. Another grief wave will hit. But you’ll handle it better because you’ve had that rest, those good moments, that release. Letting yourself have them is a kindness to yourself.
Why we built a Good Moments tool
That idea is the heart of the Good Moments tool in The Grief App. It came about for four reasons.
1. To normalize lightness
By making good moments one of the things you work toward in the app, we’re saying: this is normal. This is part of healing.
2. To help you notice joy as it happens
When I was grieving, I kept a daily journal that asked me to list three good things from my day. But by evening, in the thick of grief, I could barely remember any of them. My entries became trite: I’m glad I have my nieces and nephews. I’m happy to have my house. The same thing every day, and none of it felt meaningful.
So while developing the app, I asked myself: how do we get people to notice a good moment when it happens, rather than trying to dig one up at the end of a hard day?
The answer was already in our pockets. We all carry cameras. Taking a picture of a good moment makes you pause for just a second, pull out your phone, open the app, and capture it.
For me, this has been transformative. I’ve trained myself to stop and notice. When there’s a lovely view or something nice happening, I now catch myself thinking, this is a good moment, and I appreciate it. It retrains your brain to see these moments again.
3. A counterbalance to grief waves
Grief waves hit you out of nowhere. You can control how you breathe through them, but you can’t stop them from coming.
So we wanted a counterbalance. The app sends your saved good moments back to you at random. Just as a grief wave hits without warning, a happiness wave does too. When it arrives, we ask you to pause and savor that moment for 15 seconds. It’s the same surprise, but this time it’s joy.
4. A photo album of what’s good
When you’re grieving, it can feel like all the good things are behind you, long gone, with only pain ahead. Over time, your good moments become a photo album of positive things that have happened since your loss. That collection is quiet proof that there will be good things in your future, and that they aren’t all in the past.
Make it a daily habit
We encourage you to make good moments a daily practice. Notice them, photograph them, and enjoy them.
It is okay to laugh. It is okay to smile. It is okay to enjoy the sunshine.
It is okay to have good moments.