In a year, his parents died, sister faced cancer & he divorced. Still, NC author found joy

Hillsborough-based writer Steven Petrow has experienced grief.

In a year, he dealt with the death of both parents, his younger sister, Julie, was diagnosed with Stage 4 ovarian cancer, and he divorced his husband, leaving him single as he approached his 60th birthday.

Yet amid all that, Petrow found joy.

So, as a journalist and author does, Petrow wrote about it. And then Maria Shriver (niece of John F. Kennedy, former first lady of California, journalist and founder of The Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement) saw it and asked Petrow to turn his column into a book, which she would publish through her company, The Open Field.

That book, “The Joy You Make: Find the Silver Linings — Even on Your Darkest Days,” is Petrow’s seventh, and is available now. In it, Petrow outlines different ways to regularly experience joy.

“I call it a road map, and it’s the road map that I took over the last five or so years,” he said.

His byline has appeared in publications including the Washington Post, The New York Times and USA Today, among other outlets. He’s also the 2024 North Carolina Piedmont Laureate.

“My mission is to bring books and writers to folks in the three counties that I serve — that’s Wake, Orange and Durham,” said Petrow, who received his bachelor’s degree in history from Duke University. “And I’ve been doing a lot of different events during the year. It’s been a fantastic year, and there’s a lot more to come.”

The author, who will have an event at Chapel Hill’s Flyleaf Books (6 p.m. Sept. 12) , spoke with The News & Observer about his career and experiences working on the book.

(Note: The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.)

On becoming a writer

N&O: What were you planning to do with your history degrees?

Petrow : I was planning to teach college. Around that same time, I was diagnosed with cancer. I was 26, and I remember just thinking, “I’m not sure that’s how I want to actually spend the rest of my life,” in colleges, especially if I don’t have the rest of my life. And I kind of went through a little process. I had been a newspaper writer in college and went off on that journey, and here I am many, many years later.

N&O: You’ve written a lot about civility, manners and similar topics. What draws you to writing about them?

Petrow : I should probably say what I’m about to say for the last 10 years, but more than ever, we need more civility. We need more respect. We need less polarization and isolation. I think that when we look at individuals, at families and communities that matters. And when we look at our nation that matters. That’s why I did the TED talk I did a little while ago, and that’s why I write about it.

On ‘The Joy You Make’

N&O: Your book is arranged into different sections on what you’ve referred to as “flavors” of joy. How did you come up with those flavors?

Petrow : I did a lot of interviewing experts — sociologists, psychologists, other types of academic researchers. I use my social media platforms as means to gather my reporting both for the book and for the regular journalism I do. And I look to my own experience and those I know well. Things began to kind of fall out into the three dozen-plus buckets that are there — everything from the joy of blue, which is about the water and the water’s ability to heal, mentioned gratitude, joy of memory.

N&O: Were there any ways to experience joy that didn’t make it in the book?

Petrow : There were one or two that I’m not remembering right now, and I guess the reason they’re not in there is they were derivative of one of the others. So they didn’t seem like like stand-alones. Not that there are only 40 ways to experience joy. There are many more.

N&O: Were there any ways to experience joy that come more naturally to you?

Petrow : My list of what will be easier will not necessarily be someone else’s. And a lot of them, they tell my own story. I’m thinking about the joy of imperfection. That now comes to me easily, but the first time I was really confronted with imperfection was when I had testicular cancer. And because of the surgeries and so on, I had two different-sized testicles. I thought everything in life should be paired and matched and the same, so that was a challenge to me. But then I talk about my road to acceptance of imbalance and imperfection. There’s a lot more of that in the world, and if that can bring you a smile, or that can bring you joy, that gives you more opportunities to experience it.

N&O: Did you ever find a way to experience joy and then look back at some experiences you already had in your own life?

Petrow : Yes, and like many, I came into this project thinking that joy is the fireworks. You know, it’s a big celebration. That’s known as ecstatic joy. But there’s so many other kinds of joys that I didn’t understand, and therefore I wasn’t registering them as joy, when they happened. For instance, being at a concert, that collected effervescence as it’s called, it lifts us up, it brings us together. And that’s a kind of joy, and that was one that we really did not experience that much during the pandemic. It took a while for us to be able to come back. ...

Here’s one that kind of changed. Growing up, I had played a lot of games with my family, and we were competitive, and it was fun. But in recent years, I’ve started playing both board games and tennis and have come to understand that those experiences — winning or losing — they bring us together with others. And that’s one of the ways that I understand joy, is gratitude, connection, that joy sits on those fundamental pillars.

N&O: What do you hope readers will take away from your book?

Petrow : I hope that they will smile many times during the reading of it. And I hope that they will come away with a broader understanding of what joy is and the ways that they can incorporate or experience it in their daily lives, with the secondary understanding that that’s kind of crucial for us as people. We need joy. There’s a philosopher who said, man cannot live without joy. Humans cannot live without joy, without a light, without a hope. And we’ve been in a dark period. I’m not getting partisan here, but I think that’s why the joy campaign is resonating so much. It may not even be about politics. It just might be about attitude and emotion.

N&O: What was different about writing this book compared to your previous books or columns?

Petrow : I often write about personal things in my work, but there is a through line in this book about my sister Julie’s diagnosis with ovarian cancer and her subsequent death last year. That deeply personal aspect of this book differentiates it. And at the same time, she was a living example of how we can feel joy in the moment, in the present, as as our family did with her, and then to hold anticipatory loss and then huge grief after she died, this duality in life and in our hearts. So I feel like I’m much more exposed in this book.

On what’s next

N&O: What’s your next project?

Petrow : I’m working on a bunch of columns for The Washington Post. Then I have a Piedmont laureate event at So & So Books on Sept. 24 about book banning, and then one that’s co-sponsored by the Wake County Library and the Durham County Library right before the election, about how we can reclaim civility in our lives, with some great panelists and some real actionable advice.

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