JOY

I was driving I felt JOY

It might sound banal, as we say in French. But if you’ve experienced trauma—especially childhood trauma—moments of peace or fleeting happiness can happen. They come like a soft breeze, and then they’re gone. But joy? Joy with a capital J—the kind that stays, that roots itself deep, bringing calm to the mind, body, and soul—that kind of joy can feel almost impossible to reach.

For so long, I wondered: How does joy feel? How do you recognize it when your heart has carried so much weight?

In her book Atlas of the Heart, Brené Brown defines joy as “an intense feeling of deep spiritual connection, pleasure, and appreciation. It is more constant than happiness and often rooted in gratitude and connection.”

For many of us who’ve walked through pain, joy feels like a distant land we’re afraid to enter—like it wasn’t made for us. The trauma conditions us to expect the worst, to brace for impact, even when there’s nothing to fear. We grow up learning that happiness is fragile, fleeting, and not for people like us.

But on this day, as I drove, something shifted. The sun was casting a golden light across the horizon, my favorite song played softly in the background, and for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel like I was chasing or running. I was simply here. I was present. And in that stillness, joy found me.

It rose softly within me, unexpected and full—not because of any grand event or achievement, but because something deep in my spirit whispered, it’s safe to feel this now. I didn’t fight it. I didn’t question it. I let it stay.

This holiday season, we hear the words “Joy to the World,” a proclamation that “the King has come.” But what if the real joy is realizing that you have come back to yourself? Not as a broken version of who you once were, but as your godly, royal, true self. The you who is whole. The you who is worthy. The you who is home.

To feel joy after pain is no small thing. It’s a homecoming. It’s the soul remembering what it’s like to live unburdened, even for a moment. It is you reclaiming the truth of who you are: divine, resilient, and limitless.

And perhaps the greatest lesson I’ve learned is this: we don’t need permission to feel joy. We don’t need a perfect life, a perfect body, or perfect circumstances. Joy is available to us when we allow ourselves to be present, to be grateful, to receive.

If you’ve felt disconnected from joy, I invite you to pause and look for it in the small things. Start with gratitude. Start with noticing. Because joy—true, soul-rooted joy—isn’t something you find. It’s something you allow.

On that drive, I didn’t just feel joy. I remembered who I was before the pain. And I decided to hold onto that feeling for as long as it would stay.

This season, let the joy to your world be the moment you come back to yourself—your light, your truth, your wholeness. Because you are the gift.