Why JOY?

I chose, or perhaps it chose me, Joy as my guiding word for this year. I did not know then that I would be called to lead The Joy UP, though looking back it makes perfect sense. Women who were seeking more joy started to come into my life, holding joy as their intention and looking for ways to connect deeper into this state of joy that sometimes we feel far removed from.

I wanted to know, can there be joy in washing the dishes? Can we find joy even if we disagree with someone we love? Does joy exist within sadness and grief? And a big one for me, how I can hold onto joy in being a mother when I listen to my kids fight or have 30 minute melt down tantrums?

When I lost my first pregnancy at 16 weeks nearly 10 years ago, something started to happen inside of me that would not fully become apparent until this year. Even though I was in so much pain and struggling with depression I also had an ability to laugh and smile in a new way because each time I entered into joy through my depression I was choosing it. I was conscious of just how beautiful life was, how precious, how amazing. My story involved more pregnancy losses, severe postpartum depression and PTSD along with my marriage facing dissolution. I have chosen to allow that story to be a part of the journey, the adventure and my way into living a joyous life. We all have our stories. We all move through this space of life with the ability to decide how we want to feel, while doing the dishes, paying our bills or waking up in the morning.

I have learned that joy has depth, it is not one color or shape or size. It fits itself into our lives when we choose to move through resistance and into the allowing of how truly amazing we are. How good it can feel to wash dishes and look at a clean sink. How lovely it can be to refocus our children's energy and focus when they are at odds or play a game of go fish while a tantrum unfolds. How beautiful it is to honor that we don't always agree and that is OK. To sometimes do nothing but sit and breathe.

This is not to say we are going to feel good all the time. No, we are going to feel PMS and pain and sadness and depression. We are going to have anxiety and fears.

But joy asks us to allow those feelings to wash through us. Joy asks us not to resist. It may want us to have a long cry or run so fast we can hardly breathe. Joy asks us to start to love who we are, now. NOW. Joy whispers to each of us, you are enough. You are love. You are an un-freaking-believably gorgeous creature in the Universe.

Feel that. That is what these 10 days are about. Feeling so un-freaking-believably gorgeous in your world that it creates more and more and more.

That is joy.

Help me reach my goal of uniting 200 women in joy. Like this post or share it with the women in your life. Some have gifted it to their friends. Can you imagine the feeling of knowing that 199 other women are united in one purpose? Can we do it?