Greetings, my lovelies.

Apparently, you can watch fifteen seasons of Supernatural, survive demons, angels, Lucifer, God, approximately seventeen apocalypses, more Winchester deaths and resurrections than any reasonable person should be expected to keep track of, and Dean Winchester’s lifelong commitment to pie…

And then Castiel says one sentence that follows you right out of the damn show.

“Happiness isn’t in the having. It’s in just being. It’s in just saying it.”

Goddess, I love that.

I finished Supernatural Saturday night, and that line has been rattling around in my head ever since. At first, I thought it was because of the scene itself—and if you’ve watched it, you know exactly why it hits the way it does. But it wouldn’t leave me alone.

And when something won’t leave me alone, eventually I have to poke at it until I figure out why.

Turns out, I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of my life putting happiness on layaway.

I’ll be happy when…

When we have more money. When the bills aren’t stressful. When I lose weight. When I’m healthier. When the house is exactly how I want it. When everything is organized. When everyone I love is okay. When I’m okay. When I’ve healed enough, accomplished enough, fixed enough, and finally gotten my shit together.

You know—that mythical point in adulthood when everything is handled, nothing hurts, nobody needs anything, and all the Tupperware containers magically have matching lids.

I’m 56. I’m beginning to suspect that day isn’t coming.

Life occasionally behaves itself long enough to make you think you’ve finally gotten ahead of it, and then it wanders back into the room carrying some fresh bullshit.

So if happiness requires everything to be perfect first?

We’re screwed.

Now, before anybody gets the wrong idea, I like having things.

I am not about to announce that I’ve discovered enlightenment through minimalism. Been there, done that, was miserable. Apparently I require more than three possessions and an empty beige room to thrive.

I like my books. I like my crafts and my half-finished projects. I like gadgets I can justify needing with Olympic-level mental gymnastics. I like movies, cozy blankets, pretty dishes, candles, soft clothes, and interesting little things that make my home feel like mine.

And yes, I like buying things.

I like finding something I want, thinking about it for days, finally ordering it, and then tracking the package approximately four hundred times despite being fully aware that refreshing the UPS page will not make the truck move faster.

Then the box arrives, I open it, and there is that little burst of Ohhh, I love it.

That’s happiness.

I’m not going to pretend it isn’t.

But somewhere along the way, I confused enjoying the things I have with believing the next thing would finally get me there.

And sometimes the next thing wasn’t a package.

It was me.

A thinner me. A healthier me. A calmer me. A more organized me. A financially secure me. A healed me. A woman with her shit completely together who apparently wakes every morning to a spotless house, drinks lemon water, meditates at sunrise, and knows exactly where every important document is located.

I have never met this woman, but I’ve spent an awful lot of time trying to become her.

And that makes me wonder how many perfectly good versions of myself I’ve rushed past along the way.

How many ordinary days have I treated like waiting rooms because I thought my real life would begin after I fixed whatever was wrong at the moment?

That’s a hell of a thing to realize at 56.

Then this year changed the question entirely.

Mom died in May.

It’s only been a few months, and Saturday was her birthday—the first one without her here.

Those words still feel like they belong to somebody else’s story.

But life didn’t stop when Mom died.

Which feels incredibly rude, honestly.

You lose someone you love, and part of you expects the world to have the decency to acknowledge it. Dim the lights. Cancel the mail. Put a sign on the grocery store door:

Sorry, we’re closed. Someone’s mother died.

Instead, Tuesday shows up right on schedule.

The dogs need to go out. Coffee needs to be made. Work starts. Dinner still requires somebody to figure out what the hell we’re eating. The laundry remains aggressively committed to reproducing.

Your entire world changes, and the rest of the world just keeps moving.

Then one day, something makes you laugh.

And for half a second, you forget.

Not her.

You forget the weight of it.

You just laugh.

Then grief taps you on the shoulder.

Excuse me. Weren’t we being devastated?

That’s one of the strangest things I’ve discovered about grief. Happiness can make you feel guilty.

How can I laugh when Mom is gone? How can I get excited about something? How can I plan a trip, look forward to autumn, think about Christmas, enjoy my birthday, buy something ridiculous, start a new book, or curl up with a favorite movie?

As though loving someone requires a lifetime subscription to misery after they’re gone.

No.

I can miss Mom and still be happy.

I can miss my brother and laugh until my stomach hurts. I can remember my grandparents and smile instead of cry. I can desperately wish I had one more conversation with someone and still be excited about tomorrow.

One does not erase the other.

And maybe that’s where Cas’s words finally clicked for me.

Happiness isn’t in the having.

There are things I cannot have.

I can’t have another birthday with Mom. I can’t call my brother. I can’t sit in Grandma Todd’s kitchen and ask all the questions I wish she’d answered forty years ago. I can’t go backward and relive the moments I didn’t realize would someday become precious.

If happiness requires having everything I want, loss eventually makes happiness impossible.

But I’m still here.

So happiness has to live somewhere else.

Maybe it’s in being.

And maybe I’ve made that far more complicated than it needs to be.

Happiness is coffee from a favorite mug while the house is quiet.

It’s finding You’ve Got Mail again and discovering that Kathleen Kelly, Joe Fox, bookstores, email, and New York in autumn can still make me ridiculously happy.

It’s sitting at my craft table surrounded by enough supplies to make Michaels wonder whether I’m planning a hostile takeover.

It’s opening a new book and knowing absolutely nothing about where it’s about to take me.

It’s music playing while I do ordinary household crap. One of the animals doing something ridiculous. Looking around my office and thinking, Yep. This feels like me.

It’s Ronnie and me getting on each other’s nerves and then one of us saying something that makes the other laugh, because apparently marriage is equal parts love, commitment, and mutually assured sarcasm.

It’s looking forward to fall even though I live in Arizona and autumn sometimes seems to be more of a concept than an actual season.

None of those things is huge.

That’s the point.

I think I’ve spent too much time looking for happiness in the big things—the milestone, the accomplishment, the purchase, the transformation, the day when everything finally falls into place.

Meanwhile, happiness has been wandering through my ordinary life wearing sweatpants.

And maybe the question isn’t, “Am I happy with my entire life?”

That’s enormous.

Maybe the question is:

“Am I happy right now?”

Sometimes the answer will be no.

Of course it will.

Some days hurt. Some days suck. Some days I will be grieving, angry, worried, exhausted, or generally unimpressed with the universe and its current management.

But other times?

Yeah.

The coffee is good.

The movie is familiar.

The dog is being ridiculous.

Ronnie made me laugh.

There’s a book waiting for me.

I have something I’m excited about.

For this moment, I’m happy.

And that brings me to the part of Cas’s sentence I almost overlooked.

“It’s in just saying it.”

Maybe there is power in allowing ourselves to say the good thing while it’s true instead of immediately qualifying it.

I’m happy.

Not, I’m happy, but…

Not, I’ll really be happy when…

Not, I shouldn’t be happy because…

Just:

I’m happy.

That doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten Mom.

It doesn’t mean I’ve finished grieving.

It means I can carry the grief without letting it take every good moment hostage.

It doesn’t mean my life is perfect, my problems are solved, my body is exactly how I want it, the bills have disappeared, or I’ve finally figured out how to fold a fitted sheet without swearing.

It means happiness showed up, and I don’t have to feel guilty for letting it in.

And instead of telling it to come back later when everything is perfect, I’m finally opening the damn door.

At 56, I don’t want to keep treating my actual life like the waiting room for the life I’m eventually going to enjoy. I’ve spent enough years believing happiness would begin after the next fix, the next goal, the next version of me finally got her shit together. Meanwhile, my real life has been standing right here, tapping its foot and wondering if I’m ever going to let her in.

This is it.

The messy parts. The beautiful parts. The heartbreaking parts. The ridiculous parts. The things I still want to change and the things I wouldn’t change for anything.

This is my life.

I still want things. I still have goals. I still want to grow, learn, travel, create, change, heal, and probably buy more craft supplies than any one woman reasonably needs.

I’m still going to complain. I mean, let’s not pretend grief has transformed me into some serene woodland creature who greets every inconvenience with gratitude. I am still me. I will still have opinions, still get irritated, still mutter at technology, and still wonder why every household task somehow requires three trips to another room.

Happiness doesn’t mean I’ve stopped being human. It just means I don’t have to wait until I’ve become a better, calmer, more organized version of myself before I let myself enjoy the life I’m already living.

Please.

Let’s not get carried away.

But I don’t have to finish becoming whoever I’m going to be before I’m allowed to enjoy being who I am.

Maybe happiness isn’t some finish line I keep chasing with a coffee in one hand and a list of things to fix in the other.

Maybe it’s letting myself enjoy this version of me—the one still grieving, still growing, still occasionally buying craft supplies like she’s preparing for the apocalypse, and still figuring things out as I go.

Maybe happiness means I don’t have to have everything handled before I admit that some parts of my life are already pretty damn good.

Not having everything.

Not fixing everything.

Not knowing everything.

Just being here when the good moments come.

Noticing them instead of immediately wondering what could go wrong, what still needs fixing, or whether I somehow forgot to be miserable about something.

And having the nerve to say:

Yeah. I’m happy.

Not because everything is perfect. Not because grief packed a bag and moved out. Not because I finally became the mythical woman who has her shit together and knows where the tape measure is.

I’m happy because this moment is good.

And right now, that’s enough.