Finding my Joy

I was talking to a good friend on FaceTime. I was feeling off, I had started the year dedicated to following my joy and then losing Blue (my Great Dane) in February had put me so far away from any thought of joy. In fact, that loss just seemed to highlight all the things that I didn’t have in my life but longed for.

For weeks and weeks, I tried to pull myself out of it and some weeks I could a bit but then it seemed like a new dark layer of loss would overcome me. When my friend and I started that call that day I was immediately near tears, I was exasperated by the losses, I was lost as to how to find my joy again.

After I spilled my guts out to my dear friend leaving nothing unsaid, he simply said to me, what if your joy is right here right now?” With those words an odd image popped into my mind, it was a replay of me putting coconut spread on my toast that morning. I had this immediate recognition that I had not been present when I made my toast, my thoughts had been somewhere else far away.

Blog 57 - Finding my joy

I wasn’t even present with my toast, the irony of the situation made me laugh. I explained what I was seeing in my mind to my friend. I said that I have been living in my longing. I was not living in my present. In that very moment I affirmed that I was just going to focus on the moment and find the joy in every moment because the fact was that I had plenty to be joyful about.

My friend then encouraged me to perhaps go back to the Human Awareness Institute Level 1 workshop. The workshop that I had done with my now ex-husband back in 2019, a workshop about intimacy and sexuality. I promised to consider it over that coming weekend.

I pondered what it might feel like to sit in that workshop room as a single woman, to take in those lessons and process them from my new reality. To be in that room and be present to all of it, be present to my own process and my own feelings. I decided to go.

I am so glad that I did, it felt so good to see old friends that weekend and make new friends.

That was when I met him. I still remember what I felt when our eyes first met. I still remember how my stomach lurched the first time he smiled at me. I wasn’t sure that I would ever feel attraction again and yet here it was, but it was more than attraction there was an energetic resonance.

I was challenged that weekend to speak about my attraction, let him know, not because I wanted something but to just own my own truth of it, without fear of it being used against me.

As a kid, I had always been taught to never let my feelings be known, particularly feelings of attraction because they could be used against me. I approached him, we were outside, just the two of us, I told him that I wanted to tell him something and I didn’t need him to do anything with it and with that, I owned my own attraction.

In that moment I didn’t feel fear, I didn’t worry that those words would be used against me, I felt incredibly powerful.

I went home after that workshop feeling so connected to myself, to my own power and in full connection to my own joy again. Ever since that weekend I have been listening to music, singing, and living in my own joy. Knowing that living in my own longing is a desperate and lonely place.

Instead living in my own present moment is the best place to be, it is joyful, it is beautiful. I feel my most beautiful and powerful self. I feel as though I have come back to life.

Before diving into some questions for you to perhaps ponder in your own thoughts or writing, I won’t leave you hanging. Since that weekend, yes, he and I have spoken. Since we don’t live near one another that has allowed us the time to just get to know each other. We are in this state of ever-present curiosity with one another that feels good. I have no idea where this is going and right now, it doesn’t matter.

I am not living in my longing of what might be. I just want to be present for every single solitary moment of this present because that is absolutely where my joy lives. I want to be fully present for every second that I make my own toast or get to hear his sexy voice singing to me on the phone. Not missing one second.

Here are some questions for you to ponder as you journal or even as you drive to the office

  • How are you living in your joy?
  • Are you truly present for the little things that you do each day?
  • How do you show up to own your truth?
  • Where are you right now?

I blog because I want to question myself. I want to pose questions to anyone willing to hear them. Anyone curious about how they could show up as a better person than they were yesterday by questioning their thoughts and their own beliefs. If you want to question yourself, if you want to ask yourself how you can show up more fully in your life, then subscribe to my email community to ensure you continue to do that. I blog about once a month so you will not receive a ton of emails from me, only what I hope to be the best questions that we can ask ourselves on our journey to being our best, most joyful selves.

In love,
Renee

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