Recently a question popped up in my DMs:

I’m a single 38 year-old woman who wants to be married and be a mother. How do I keep my anxiety over my relationship status from constantly stealing my joy?

I’ve just been finding it difficult to experience simple, everyday joys when it often feels like some of the greatest joys in life are beyond my reach.

— S

This question struck a nerve for me, not only because I remember well the feeling of being somehow locked out of life, as I sifted through a mailbox full of wedding invitations (without a plus one) and birth announcements, fearing it might never be my turn.

But also because all of us go through periods where our lives fall short of our expectations. Whether because of illness or loss, financial difficulty or infertility, the predations of others or plain bad luck — life disappoints all of us at some point. Sometimes it leaves us waiting, hanging in limbo with no clues as to whether happiness is just around the corner, or nowhere in sight. Or sometimes it tells us in no uncertain terms that our dream is DOA.

The second scenario is unquestionably the more brutal, but its finality is also freeing. A closed door doesn’t keep us waiting. It forces us to consider what else our life might be for, and move our search for happiness elsewhere.

Finding Joy When Your Dreams Are Falling Through

Waiting for the uncertain promise of happiness is much harder, in my experience. And harder still when there’s an expiration date on the dream, as is the case for women who want to give birth to a child. In my experience, waiting can feel like wishing your time away. Like wanting to just flip ahead to the end of the book so you can know what happens to your favorite character. Yet that time you’re wishing away is still your life.

The answer is obviously not the “count your blessings” approach of the toxic positivity crowd. It doesn’t solve anything, and often just leaves us feeling worse. And if “the universe has your back” / “everything happens for a reason” philosophy works for you, then great. But it’s certainly not the answer for everyone.

But what, then? Is it possible to keep anxiety and uncertainty from crushing the delight of daily living?

If so, here’s how I’d go about it.

Get clear

Fear narrows. Joy expands. So if the situation you’re in is creating anxiety, your first step should be to get clear on whatever is knowable, ASAP.

I used to avoid clarity because I was afraid that I’d find out something horribly disappointing. If you don’t take the test / submit the application / ask the question, you can go along believing that your dream might be possible. But by living with your eyes half-closed, you’re trading potential disappointment for certain anxiety.

So, go get the fertility workup. See a therapist and ask yourself if there might be anything from your past that might be holding you back from a fulfilling relationship. While you’re at it, look at the models you have for motherhood. And what fears you might have about that monumental undertaking. Ask yourself whether having a child without a partner is an option. If yes, talk to family and friends about how they might support you through that experience. Based on that information, make a plan for how you’ll handle the next few years. Will you prioritize dating like it’s your job? Will you prioritize saving for a future family of two? Even if what you’re crafting is a plan B, having it will free a lot of cognitive load that is currently going toward the anxiety you have simmering on the back burner.

Mourn the plan

Now that you’ve acknowledged this isn’t how you wanted things to go, allow yourself to process your disappointment. In our How to Dream workshop, we do an exercise on grieving unlived lives — letting ourselves feel the sadness of possibilities now closed to us — so that we can focus our attention on the dreams that still might be born.

It’s easy to dismiss an unlived life as “just a dream” or “a silly wish,” and it’s understandable that you might want to minimize the suffering of not getting the life you wanted. You may have been raised to see disappointment as ingratitude, or believe that “just getting on with it” is resilience, and it’s foolish to dwell on the past. I certainly did.

But what I’ve learned is that if we don’t allow ourselves to grieve our unlived lives, sometimes they can “haunt” our present. We don’t feel full agency in our lives. Because we feel like our situation is something that happened to us, something we just ended up with.

I’ll make this personal.

When I was younger, I dreamed of being a matriarch of a big family. I imagined having three or more kids, a big noisy lively bunch. As an only child of parents who split when I was two, that sounded like heaven to me. Then I met my partner late, and struggled for four years with infertility. And my one child is the greatest, most magical gift.

I’m lucky to find that this life is exactly right for me — a quieter, more intimate family that is simpler in its dynamics, a snug little nest. But I believe I’m able to feel this wholeheartedly because I’ve allowed myself to also feel the loss of that other dream, and truly let it go.

It’s ok to feel sad that you haven’t gotten the easy path you’d hoped for. And that it’s been hard to watch others celebrating what you want while you watch from a distance. You can be happy for them, and still hopeful, while being sad that it didn’t go down the way you wanted it to.

Live like it’s going to happen

Imagine you visited a psychic, and she looked into her crystal ball and told you that exactly one year from today, your dream will come true. You’ll meet the person you’re going to marry and have a child with. How would you spend the next year?

I asked myself this question about four months before I ended up getting together with Albert. My answer: making my life the kind of life I’d be happy to invite someone else into. In other words, not waiting!

I started reading poetry every morning before I got up. I stopped eating dinner in front of the TV all the time. And started taking myself out to eat on occasion. I searched out inspiring places to write. And would spend my Saturdays scribbling away in the Rose Reading Room at the New York Public Library. I made art dates with friends and drank a lot of Manhattans.

Did I feel lonely sometimes? Sure.

But I reminded myself that one day, when I was married and had my family, I’d be too busy to do a lot of the things I enjoyed doing back then. (True fact.) And so the best way to spend that time was so that whatever happened, I wouldn’t regret it.

A big theme in my work these days is how strangely vulnerable joy is. Many of us have learned to cope with the uncertainty of life by bracing ourselves, worrying about and dress rehearsing our losses before they happen, as if this will somehow blunt the pain of their arrival.

Right now, you may be bracing yourself against the fear that your dream of finding a partner and being a mother won’t come true. Anxiety becomes like armor, and this keeps joy at a distance. How can we risk letting ourselves have joy when disappointment might be just around the corner?

But here’s a secret: when you get the thing, you have even more to lose. And this practice of holding joy at arm’s length can go on forever.

So if there’s one thing you can do for that future self, the one who hopefully soon will be sleeplessly pacing a dimly lit nursery, half-covered in spitup, it’s to learn how to let joy in. Even when you’re worried. Even when it’s just a small glimmer in a dark night. Even when it feels like it might break your heart.