Why Do I Write About Joy?

This episode gets a little personal, talking about some of the pain in my life that led me to write and speak about joy. 

Transcript

Laura Wakefield: 0:08

This is going to be a bit of a personal episode today as I share some things about my life that I don't ordinarily talk about, but they have to do with why I decided to start a podcast focused around joy. Welcome to the Joy fulicity Podcast. I'm your host, Laura Wakefield. Why do I teach and speak about joy? The reason is very simple. Because I personally have known so much pain. The deep, soul-crushing kind of pain that makes you question everything you know and everything you are, your values, your belief system, your very being, to the point of wondering sometimes if life is worth living at all, if darkness can come and swallow you whole like that. Pain that makes you terrified to reach for light and love because you question if you even deserve it or whether you would ever be enough to sustain it. There's a lot of pain in this world. Sometimes it looks the way that you expect it to with people who are outwardly sad, who are crying or facing depression, things that you would expect. But sometimes it looks like the person who is happy and smiling and laughing on social media, presenting a happy life when the world is falling apart behind the scenes. Sometimes it looks like a comedian who cracks jokes. to cover the sadness. Sometimes it looks like a player or a party girl that's out running around trying to get little hits of something that feels like happiness so that they don't have to hurt so much. I myself was the victim of long-term child abuse, carried out by someone that I should have been able to trust. Being very young and very scared, it took me nine years to summon the courage to finally tell my parents and free myself of it. This leaves scars on the mind and on the heart. I have physical scars, too, from several serious surgeries with extensive recoveries. In addition, I've had nine full-term pregnancies and two that ended in miscarriage. Childbirth has brought me to the highest of highs with the arrival of each of my amazing children. But it's also plunged me to some very low lows, also. My weight and hormones have been on a yo-yo string for years, with the accompanying postpartum depression, health issues, and emotional swings. I've been married twice, to men that I loved very much, and my heart has been shattered as both of those marriages went down in the fiery flames of divorce, just as my mom and dad's marriage had when I was a child. I've lost a business I worked years to build. I've lost money, a lot of money, with comforts and security vanishing along with it, leaving me often working multiple jobs at once while also struggling to maintain life as a single mother to a very large family. I've watched as addiction stole the spark from the eyes of people that I loved. A long-held faith died a slow, marching death inside of me, and honestly, this hurt and confused me above all else. Depression has been an occasional visitor in my life, and anxiety a near-constant companion. To put decades of pain into simple words doesn't really do justice to the powerful emotions involved, but there it is in black and white. A lifetime of aching. And I would imagine that anybody listening today has a personal pain paragraph of their own as well. Suffering seems to be a universal experience in all of its varying forms. I'm only sharing this today to let other people know that I've been right there in the mire of it too. I don't tend to talk about it often because it's not where I choose to live and it's not where I choose to put my focus. But I do want people to understand that I fully know that life really hurts sometimes. So why then do I teach and speak about joy if I've been through so many difficult things? Because while I was on this long journey through pain, I've learned that joy is the cure. Much like sunlight peeking through the clouds after a storm, joy and her sisters, gratitude, love, and enthusiasm provide a healing balm to a wounded soul. I've also learned that even in the worst of times, joy is always present if we have eyes to see it. Sometimes we just simply have forgotten how to feel happiness and need to be reminded. Sometimes we're seeking it in all the wrong places. Speaking about joy is my way of personally remaining aware and open-minded so that I keep noticing and embracing it myself. But it's also my meager offering of love to the world and my effort to possibly lift up someone else who is struggling to stand. to convey that there's a reason to hope, to smile and to breathe. If I can help even one person to dig deeper into their heart for that little bit of hope that will get them through whatever they're going through until they can reach the other side with some healing and perspective and understanding, and help them to believe that there's joy still left to be found in their life, then that makes everything that I've been through in my life worth it. If I can take the lessons that I've learned and teach them to somebody else, it gives all of that pain a purpose. So it's something that I feel very, very passionate about as I look around this world and see pain in all of its many forms. I feel passionate about bringing a little bit of light and a little bit of joy and a little bit of hope into that situation. And I'm excited to be bringing some guests on very soon that also have perspectives that lead toward that same message. Darkness can truly be transformed into a light-filled story of joy. And I look forward to writing it together. Thank you so much for joining me today on The Joyfulicity Podcast. Just a reminder, dare to dream, plan to play, and live to learn.