There was something big that appeared in my life back in 2018 that I wonder how many other people have experienced or have inherently known all along – joy can exist beside pain. That was the year I lost my mother and met my husband.
I was in my own year of magical thinking. Profound loss has a way of doing that. It was the daily calls my brother Paul made and a smile from a man who smiles with his whole self that began to lift the veil that the two could coexist. Both were there accepting me where I was and not expecting me to be okay already.
If you don’t know the reference, Joan Didion wrote a profound description of walking through grief in such a palpable way that only someone who has walked through it knows. That book is The Year of Magical Thinking. I highly recommend it for resonance and understanding.
I’ve been a Joan Didion fan for years in her sometimes-sardonic observations of the world that I was born into that she navigated as an adult. That’s what appeals to this older GenX, although I didn’t experience the same events in the same way as her generation – her insights helped to make it make sense. I was born in the late sixties and witnessed the seventies as a child. I was a senior in high school when the Challenger disaster occured.
One of the most surprising truths about being human is that joy does not always wait for pain to leave before it arrives. Sometimes laughter shows up in the middle of grief. Sometimes beauty breaks through on an ordinary afternoon when nothing about life has been fixed. Sometimes a kind word, a song, a meal, a sunrise, or a small moment of connection reminds us that suffering is not the only thing happening.
This does not mean pain becomes less real. Joy is not denial. It is not a refusal to acknowledge what hurts. Instead, joy is a quiet protest against the idea that hardship gets to occupy every room in the house. It creates a little space where breath can return, where gratitude can flicker, where the heart can remember that it is still alive.
That’s why life can be unfair and still be worth living. Because even in difficult seasons, there can be moments worth noticing, people worth loving, stories worth continuing, and reasons – however small – to stay open to tomorrow.
That was what This Is Us accomplished so well in exploring.
It wasn’t until I started watching the That Was Us podcast on Hulu along with my 3rd watch of This Is Us that I connected again that Griffin Dunne was Joan Didion’s nephew. Back in 2017 I watched his documentary The Center Will Not Hold. That’s when I knew that the director of Practical Magic, who has a wealth of valuable work in his own right, was Joan Didion’s nephew. Then I had to explain to my husband how delicious it was that Nicky was Joan Didion’s nephew – and who Joan Didion was. He sort of knew her work but not her name. In my mind, how was that possible!! She was such an icon.
All this work and being in the feels in all of this interconnected art reflecting in a resonate way for me is where I found myself. What interesting things to think about and appreciate. Watching the podcast has led us to some interesting places and conversations. The podcast also led us to Paradise.
And, yes, if anyone wants to know, we think there is value in continuing the podcast after the rewatch of the series is over. It would also be interesting to see a spin off for the next generation of the Pearsons or a movie or series with the next generation or a tertiary storyline. Please continue this level of storytelling as a reflection into the depths of the universal human experience.
Ken and Dan… keep up the good work. And to Sterling, Chris, and Mandy… we love the podcast and the other things you have going on.
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