Happy days: The memory of good days can get us through the tough times

Do happy memories cheer us up when life’s challenging? Helen O’Callaghan finds out about how recollections have sustained us in this year of Covid.

Close-up top view of man holding photograph of himself and his son fishing over wooden desk

Coming into the summer of 2019, my husband and I couldn’t decide whether we’d visit his family in the US. We’d been just the year before – could we really justify making a transatlantic trip so soon again?

In the end we went for it, and how glad we were when Covid-19 locked up all possibilities this year of an American holiday. Hemmed in by restrictions, we lived off happy memories of long summer days on Lake Michigan. It made me realise the power of memories to sustain and brighten life when things are tough.