A Pair of Socks and Two Bookmarks
On joy, gratitude, and noticing how far we’ve travelled
When I began reflecting on joy, I didn’t expect my mind to travel back more than thirty years to a pair of socks.
I was a young adult navigating one of the first significant losses of my adult life. My granddad had died and, in that moment, a small package arrived through the front door. It was a card from a friend and a gift of a jazzy pair of socks. The card said, “I hope that you don’t find this frivolous, but I just wanted you to know that I was thinking about you and I cared about you.”
It was so amazing to have a friend who knew me well enough to choose something that she knew I would like. It mattered so much because I felt seen and known. I wasn’t excited because they were the most wonderful socks in the world. Had I bought them for myself, I might simply have thought, “Oh yes, nice pair of socks.” But she knew me. In the midst of grief, she had noticed my pain and reached towards me with something small, thoughtful and deeply personal.
The joy it brought was extraordinary: such a small act, and yet so deeply felt.
As I reflected on that long-ago gift, I realised that joy had visited me again only a few days earlier.
I was in a therapy session and my therapist, who I’ve been working with through some really deep and difficult stuff, said to me, “You know, I think you’re getting to the place where you won’t need any regular sessions anymore.”
I think if she’d said that even a month before, I would have panicked. I would have felt abandoned. But I didn’t. Instead, I replied, “Oh, but I’ve only been in this good place for two minutes.”
So yes, I had mixed emotions. I knew she wasn’t going anywhere. I felt proud of myself and the progress I’d made. I felt excited for the future and grateful for her skilled help. But I also felt strangely anxious. Joy had arrived with a flutter of fear.
That made me think about Brené Brown’s work. Brené Brown calls this foreboding joy: our tendency to brace ourselves just as something good is happening. I recognised it immediately. Rather than simply receiving the moment, part of me was already preparing for it to disappear.
I guess that was what I was doing with my therapist. I was trying to figure out: What if I’m not quite there yet? What if this isn’t as good as I think it is?
It struck me that joy can make us feel strangely exposed.
As I mulled all this over, I thought, you know what, I’m just going to check up on foreboding joy and see whether I remembered it correctly.
I have both read and listened to Brené Brown’s wonderful book Atlas of the Heart multiple times over the years. It’s one of those books I’ve returned to again and again because it has helped me put words to experiences that once felt impossible to name.
I realised I probably hadn’t opened my own copy for over a year. So I went downstairs to the bookcase to check whether my memory of foreboding joy was correct.
As I opened the book, two bookmarks fell out.
The first marked a page entitled “Anguish”. The second, “Disconnection”.
It took my breath away.
The last time I had reached for this book, those were the chapters I needed.
Now I was opening it to look up joy instead.
It dawned on me just how far I had travelled.
Growth can be difficult to see from the middle of it. Often we don’t notice the slow, quiet changes taking place in our lives until something unexpectedly reveals them to us.
It’s a bit like children, and I think all parents know this well. You see your children every day and assume they’re much the same. Then one morning you look down and their trousers are halfway up their legs and you realise they’ve been growing all along.
Those bookmarks were a bit like a short-trouser moment for me.
They hadn’t caused the growth, but they certainly revealed it.
My friend’s lovely sock gift, the two bookmarks, and my therapist’s encouragement about my progress all brought me to the same place: immense gratitude.
Gratitude for a friend who noticed.
Gratitude for a therapist who reflected back growth I wasn’t seeing.
Gratitude for the distance covered.
So I’m left wondering whether joy isn’t always found in life’s big milestones.
Sometimes it arrives in a pair of socks.
Sometimes it comes in a sentence spoken by someone who knows us well.
Sometimes it’s two forgotten bookmarks falling from an old book.
And sometimes, if we’re paying attention, those small moments gently reveal just how far we’ve travelled.
If this piece resonated with you, perhaps take a moment to reflect on your own “short-trouser moments”—those small signs that reveal how far you’ve travelled.
What has unexpectedly shown you that growth was happening, even when you couldn’t see it at the time?
If you’d like to share, I’d love to hear your story in the comments. Often, by telling our stories, we help one another notice the quiet work of growth in our own lives.