It is possible to find joy even in the midst of the most difficult of circumstances

I have learnt, in the last two and a half years, that it is possible to find joy even in the midst of the most difficult of circumstances - when everything you took for granted in your life and that you imagined was the basis of your happiness, is upended, threatened, even destroyed. What do you do when you can no longer live the perfect life that you thought you had? I have learnt that if you accept, and even embrace, change and let go of control (which is an illusion anyway!) that can become a source of tremendous freedom and that freedom, and the discovery that you can be happy and joyful when almost everything you knew has crashed and burned, makes me brave and unafraid of what lies ahead. While I would never have wished for what happened to happen (it crushed me and broke my heart), I understand that it is precisely because it happened that I am braver, stronger and yes, more joyful than I was before.