“Laughter connects you with people. It’s almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you’re just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy.”

~John Cleese

Yesterday I had a realisation…. I’ve lost my laugh. Or rather, I gave it away.

He hated my laugh… the too-loud witch cackle.

I learned to hate my laugh too.

I spent the past 20 years trying to change my laugh. To make it quieter, less annoying, but in the process, I lost it.

Losing my laugh meant I lost my deep capacity for joy. Suppressing my laugh, holding it in my throat, preventing its escape shut down my ability to communicate love.

How dare he take my laugh. How could I have betrayed myself so savagely as to allow him to have it?

It is in the smallest of moments that pieces of ourselves are stripped away. The little comments, criticisms, the rejections along the way….

One day you wake up and don’t recognise yourself. So many pieces missing.

I didn’t know that this isn’t what love looks like.

True love would never take your laugh.

Of all the betrayals, indignities, and disrespect, this one hurts the most.

Today, I am reclaiming my laugh. I will laugh as loud and as deep as the moment calls for, or for no reason at all.

For anyone who cannot revel in my unfettered joy, who lacks the capacity to experience intense emotions, including bliss, has no place in my life!

I will never again betray myself as to dim my light to enable another’s need to hide in the dark.

I am reclaiming all pieces of my soul that were lost, stolen, given away.

This new chapter will begin with getting to know myself again… the woman I abandoned so many years ago.

And it will include so much laughter, I’ll never need to do a sit-up again!

Namaste.

www.janajoy.com