There’s a fine line between toxic positivity and joyous alignment. My barely verbal cancer kid showed me how to walk it.

Recently, while buying a lottery ticket, I remembered reading that big jackpot winners often report lower levels of happiness five years out.

Meanwhile, I have heard story after story about people who receive a terminal or life threatening diagnosis and end up calling it the best thing that ever happened to them.

It made me wonder… Do we actually know what we want? What would truly lead us to happier lives?

This took me back to a memory from about six weeks after River’s original diagnosis. She had been on chemo for over a month and we had just gotten out of the hospital a few days before. River still wasn’t walking.

She was 17 months old and had started walking at 11 months, but had stopped about a week before her diagnosis. They told me that there was pressure on her hip joint from the impacted bone marrow, crowded with rapidly multiplying blast cells, and that this was making her unwilling to bear weight on her hip without support. It had now been eight weeks since she’d taken a step on her own.

She was standing at the coffee table, playing with her latest “Spencer’s Treasures” toys (the box of donated fast food toys that the hospital kids get to choose a prize from after each procedure).

I was across the room, sitting crosslegged in front of the fireplace, going through the mail that had accumulated in our absence. There was a package from an organization my mom had found that sent free resources to families of pediatric cancer patients.

I started flipping through a book called Faces of Hope. There were full photo spreads on every page – picture after picture of smiling bald kids surrounded by their smiling families. One page had a quote pasted across it that said “Cancer was the best thing that ever happened to us”

Instantly, I felt enraged. How dare these people try to invalidate my agony with toxic positivity. “The best thing that ever happened to you!? Why would you even SAY that!!?”

Then I burst into tears, realizing that very soon, my sweet beautiful baby would look bald and sick like these kids. How could this be happening to us!!?

For several moments the desperation took me again, like it had many times in the past two months. Waves of grief, fear, and terror – a level of darkness, depression, and despair that I did not know how to survive.

Then, through my sobs, I heard a tiny voice from across the room.

“Mama cry?” she asked. She had stopped playing and was standing at the edge of the coffee table, looking at me with wide, concerned eyes.

“Mama cry?” she asked again, cocking her head at an angle, confused by my big emotions.

Then, without any hesitation, she released the coffee table, confidently toddled the 15 or 20 steps to reach me by the fireplace, flung her little arms around my neck, and whispered “Mama Cry. Hug.” And squeezed me tight.

For a moment, everything in me broke with every possible human emotion.

And then, deep inside me, something roared to life.

“Oh FUCK NO!!”

“We are NOT going through this nightmare with this tiny cancer-ridden being feeling like she has to be the one to comfort ME. I don’t know how we’re going to get through this but it’s NOT going to be like this.”

I swooped up my little miracle, hugged her back, and let only the salve of her love and the relief in her long-awaited steps reach my heart. Suddenly the tears were gone. Without repression. Without dissociation.

I was just in that moment with her. Alive, walking, and loving.

And from that day on, I did my best to show up for each day through the cancer journey with at least as much joy and optimism as River.

Not because I had to. Not by masking. But by choosing to stay present with her. My precious, not-even-yet-two-year-old, who had no idea we were in crisis.

Months later, when she had more words, she would sometimes ask me questions that started with “Mommy, when you were little and you were going through cancer did you….”

For so long she had no idea that what she was living through was extraordinary. She had no voice in her mind saying “Why!? How could this be happening to us!!?”

So she just lived her life.

She still threw up from the chemo and screamed through the needles and was terrified of the sleepy meds.

But after each difficult procedure or hard day, she’d be ready for the next new moment.

OK, now what? Is it time to order room service? Can we watch Winnie the Pooh again? Should I bring my stuffed bunnies to show the nurses this time? Are the pet therapy dogs coming today? All asked with all the clarity and confidence she could pack into her adorable one-to-two sentences.

And so that’s what we did. Chemo and then cartoons. Sleepy meds and then Spencer’s Treasures. Lumbar punctures and then movie nights with chocolate and popcorn.

I still took time to cry and scream into the void when I needed to. And then I came back to the next new moment with her.

When you’re one and a half you can just live the life in front of you and naturally find the joy in it. My tiny light bringer taught me how to choose joy again at any age. Without toxic positivity. Without denial. Without bypassing.

Maybe cancer isn’t the best thing that ever happened to me, but it was definitely the doorway to a lot of the best things.

And honestly, I do think it did more for me than winning millions would have.

But here I am, still buying lottery tickets and postponing my mammogram.