A Joy Interview
with Carmen Johnson
When I first started writing about joy, it was largely because it was the subject I literally knew the least about. Except for maybe astrophysics or computational biology. Joy was (and kinda still is) a conundrum for me. As I’ve been writing this series, I’ve become more and more awake to joy. I see it regularly now, first in my own life, and then as an observer. I’m liking my new role as joy stalker. But as I’m starting to wrap my own brain around joy, I’m beginning to wonder if everyone else is having this much trouble with such a tiny 3-letter word. Especially those people I know who have been through something. Or a lot of somethings.
So, I decided to ask.
Today is our first joy interview. A conversation all around joy with someone other than me, hence the conversation thing. Today, I talk with Carmen Johnson, one of my truest friends and a woman who has been to hell and back only to grab another shovel and go back again. I’ll let her give you the details, but in the last four years, she lost her mother and her grandmother all while navigating her own breast cancer journey. If there’s someone who’s been through something, it’s her.
I’ve asked her a lot of questions during this time, but I never asked her about joy. Until today.
Q: You talk a lot about how grateful and blessed you feel now, but I don’t know that I heard those same words when you were dealing with your mother’s illness. How did you get to the grateful place?
A: It’s hard when you want to have a life different than the way you grew up. But my role models were not the best, so that journey of dealing with my mom was difficult. And it created a lot of learning within myself…what I was willing to put up with and what I wasn’t willing to put up with. I started to understand that, and literally my mom dies. And within two days I find a lump in my breast. I remember laying there thinking about where I’ve been and what all I wanted to accomplish and recognizing that I have this amazing life. I wasn’t the victim. I wasn’t what my mom raised.
I’m very conscious about what my future looks like…but I am shortsighted in my ability to be present. And because I don’t have that ability to be present, I have to intentionally grab it. I’ve worked really hard on that, but that intentionality wasn’t as strong before cancer. I think recognizing that my energy was weak, and I had to come in to focus about what that energy looked like is when I realized how beautiful my life was.
Q: I’m curious what you would say “joy” means to you.
A: I really had to think about this because joy’s not a word I use in my vocabulary. It’s not something that people would look at me and say “Oh, Carmen’s really happy. She’s full of joy.” That’s not how people experience me. So I really had to think about that, and what it was 10 years ago, I can’t tell you, but I can tell you today. When cancer hit, my gratitude was all about my relationships. Recognizing that those relationships were so interweaved into my being, I don’t think I understood it at that level before. I grew up in a broken home, a loveless home, a fatherless home. I didn’t grow up with love and relationship, so that form of unconditional love, I hadn’t understood that until I had children. And still not so much with friendships, and I learned that through this. So learning how people can show up creates joy.
And, I hate to say this, but I have enough money that the distance between my illness and my ability to take off (work) was okay. When I looked at other people that are experiencing similar tragedies, and they’re making choices between their healthcare and their ability to feed their children, yeah, it was difficult for me. And I realized that I didn’t have to make that choice, and that was joyful.
When you’re faced with your mortality, you tend to think of everything in a different lens, and legacy became important. Legacy brings me joy. When I think about my children who have both had some interesting perspectives in life at different times and where they are today and what their lives look like today, that brings me joy.
Q: Do you see your legacy as solely related to your kids? Is there any other part of your legacy that you feel like you’re cultivating?
A: Yes! I’ve started a new project. I’m advising on the board of a company called Tumbleweed. Tumbleweed is an end-of-life technology program so that you can plan out your will, your estate, your choices, what you want your funeral to look like, all of the decisions that need to be made. But this software is geared toward you and me to have conversations with our family. All of the Q&A that goes with that. And the beauty of it is that it is a location to save it so we can get it when we need it. When my grandmother was passing, I was granted this amazing organization, like no decisions were made. It never happens that way for anyone else. My job as executor was pretty easy…sell the house and cash out the investments and write checks. That was it.
(Jess inserts here) And you’re very good at that.
But not everyone gets that gift. And so this (Tumbleweed) allows us to grieve differently. It allows us to grieve the person because the “stuff” is already taken care of.
Q: What were the things on your journey that really sucked? What was the opposite of joy?
A: I would say when people would ask for things or expected things of me and I knew I couldn’t rise to the occasion. I couldn’t give what somebody was asking. That inability to show up drives a childhood baggage of “I’m not good enough.” “I’m not worthy.” I’m not…whatever the enough is. But it drove the “enough syndrome.” Our self-talk can be our worst enemy.
I have one distinct moment that stands out to me and will always stand out to me. I remember looking at my husband and saying “Aaron, I don’t want you to think I’m suicidal. I’m not that, but I’m done. I’m tired. I’m exhausted. I can’t do this another day. I don’t wanna be here. I just want to go to sleep. And if I don’t wake up, I’m okay with that.” And that wasn’t a cry for help. But I had reached a point of, I just, I don’t know what else to give. And that was actually a very beautiful moment for me because that next morning I woke up and I understood my mom’s decision to quit chemo.
(Me again) I think there’s a strengthening of relationship that can happen in that level of vulnerability that is just not something we allow ourselves to get to often.
Q: In one of my posts early on, I categorized drop-in, spontaneous, beautiful moments as joy bombs. What has been your most recent joy bomb?
A: I introduced you to Ivy at the start of our conversation who came into our lives only three days ago. But it was an unexpected find. We found this rescue not looking for it. It just kind of fell in our laps. And I had to take an opportunity to bring her home. And she is the sweetest, sweetest thing. So that is this week’s joy bomb.
It’s an underrated gift to have a conversation with a close friend about something as specific as joy. As many times as I’ve talked to Carmen, there were things I took away from this interview that I didn’t know before or at least, hadn’t heard in the same way before.
JessG’s Joy Takeaways:
Not all grief looks the same. The situation matters, and our perspective can change even inside our own grief.
For people who self-identify as the “go to”, not being able to show up can be as much a part of the grief as the situation itself. Joy may be not being asked to do anything at all so as not to be faced with your own weakness.
Legacy is joy. What we leave behind can be as meaningful as what’s in front of us.
Dogs are joy. DUH!
I hope you enjoyed this little experiment. Thank you so much to Carmen Johnson for trusting me to put her shit out in the streets, so to speak. I really do want your feedback on this series - Do you want to read what other people think about joy? And, if yes, what do you want to know? What questions do you have about joy? Would you be willing to be interviewed?
Hit the button and leave a comment or DM me or email me or Insta me (@jessgwrites). Just do something. I can’t read your mind through the Substack stratosphere, but I’d like to know what’s in it. Help a girl out!
Beautiful interview!