Joy the Movie Is a Fairy Tale Come True for Entrepreneurs and Dreamers Everywhere
Joy the movie, is a fairy tale come true for entrepreneurs and dreamers — but especially for women entrepreneurs — the mothers, the caretakers, and sometimes the single sole providers for the family unit.
It’s much easier to be an entrepreneurial father than it is to be an entrepreneurial mother. Usually, the male entrepreneur has a wife and chances are very high that HE has more time to create than SHE does.
Being an entrepreneur is sometimes a challenging lifestyle but when you’re a woman entrepreneur, your hopes and dreams can get put away, and even hidden, while you take care of your loved ones.
As little girls, we’re the strongest, most invincible creatures in the world. And we know what we want to do “for a living” when we grow up.
In the movie, Joy, there’s a scene in which we see Joy and her half-sister, Peggy, as little girls. Joy is declaring her vision for her life out loud to Peggy.
“You need a handsome prince…” — Peggy, Joy’s half-sister, states.
“No, I don’t need a prince,” Joy replies. “This is a special power. I don’t need a prince.”
— Joy, declaring her special power of making things that the world loves and finds useful, before life suddenly gets hard and her special power gets put away, upon her parents’ divorcing.
For some of us, our dreams and our special powers, get put away for 17 years.
That’s what happened to Joy, the protagonist of the movie: Joy, based on Joy Mangano, inventor of the Miracle Mop and founder of her own empire of products that have brought her great wealth.
And that’s what happened to me.
When I was 18 years old, in the 80's, I went off to college with my boyfriend. I had a dream of getting my degree in journalism and becoming a writer for one of my favorite magazines. Long story short: I dropped out of college to support my boyfriend (who became my husband) so HE could achieve his dream first. Why? That’s another story.
With the clear lens of hindsight, I see that was one of the biggest mistakes of my life — dropping out of college, becoming the sole breadwinner, and putting my dreams on hold for 17 years — yes, just like Joy did:
“Seventeen years? Why would something stay hidden for 17 years? That’s just unsettling.”
— Joy, remarking upon a passage in a book she was reading to her young daughter about cicadas that cocoon for 17 years before waking up and becoming born again but this time with wings to fly.
Reading that book to her daughter is when Joy begins to realize that she had lost herself. Somehow a cocoon had enveloped her and put her away from or made her forget her dreams of being a Maker.
It was then that she began to re-member herself.
That same thing happened to me. Seventeen years after dropping out of college, after supporting my now-ex-husband, who did have some success as a writer but never enough success that translated into financial freedom, and after having given birth to my beautiful son, and after having healed myself from low self-esteem (which was really my cocoon prison), I began to
re-member myself. I began to empower myself.
I also believe there was another huge factor in my waking up: after giving birth to my son, I decided to stay off of birth control pills. After 15 years (Why so long? That’s another story) of taking birth control pills, I stopped so that my own natural cycle could somehow come back again, without any synthetic control so that I could have a child. Motherhood was calling me. It took three years for my natural cycle to come back so that I could become pregnant. I firmly believe that that being on the pill contributed to putting me to sleep — the part of me that fights to be me — that part went into a slumber. Some studies have concluded that some forms of birth control pills cause lower levels of serotonin and that can lead to depression.
After having my natural cycle return to me (part of my power) and after giving birth to my son, it was then, in my mid-30s, that I realized it was time for me to leave the cocoon of a safe but mundane lifestyle and become an entrepreneur.
I did not state it like that at the time. At the time I did not say “I’m going to become an entrepreneur.” Nobody used that word to the extent it’s used (and respected) today. What I did was take my part-time “side-hustle” of web design creative work and turned it into a full-time business.
In the mid-90’s I saw the power of the Internet that was yet to be. I knew that Google would become the Yellow Pages of the 21st century and that the Internet would overcome TV and radio as the number one “media” that people would use. I was fortunate to acquire a computer and began to teach myself how to code a website, manually. One bracket at a time.
I also began fitness walking with a friend in the early morning hours, before the sun came up. We would walk together around the university campus near my home then, and we’d share our dreams with each other. Each of us declaring out loud, what our special powers could create and would create.
She was an artist who wanted to paint and show her work in galleries throughout Colorado instead of slowly dying inside as a teller at a small community bank.
And I wanted to start my own Web Design business and leave the job that paid decent wages but made me so miserable, that I felt trapped, sad, mad and frustrated because my creativity was imprisoned at the time. It was dormant, like in a cocoon.
I lost weight and found my passion. I walked my way into my new self. I highly recommend walking as meditation and physical fitness. You can think and envision while you walk. It works. Like magic.
After several months of those walks, the frigid temperatures of winter came and that “walking” friend and I drifted apart. But just a couple of years later, we happened to be at the same coffee shop one day and we quickly caught up on each other’s lives. We realized we had each achieved our dreams that we had shared with one another. She had quit her bank job and was going to school at the local university, studying art. She was going to be an art teacher. And she had shown her art in a gallery nearby. I told her I had quit my old job, too, and had started my own company, developing websites and providing SEO for local businesses. I was writing whatever I wanted to in my personal website. We couldn’t stop grinning because we both realized we had reached what we had been walking and talking ourselves toward: our next evolution in life and living as our authentic selves. We parted ways with big smiles on our faces. Somehow, we had made our own magic.
Speaking of Magic…
In those early years of learning my new craft, I worked hard on learning HTML and Java Script, how to create “homepages” (that’s what websites were called in those days) graphic design, marketing, Google and SEO. It was challenging but it was so fun! Instead of typewriter, paper and liquid paper, I had digital tools to work with. I was fascinated by this code that could enable me to create a digital version of a literary magazine I had been working on creating in my spare time.
I began writing online. I didn’t know it at the time but I was one of the first bloggers in the whole world.
Of course, yeah, not very many people read my blog but at least I was writing again and using code as my special power.
I coded my way into my new life. Walked there, physically and spiritually with my walking friend and then, later, coded my way in. Coding was, indeed, magical to me — those first years, especially. I could write a snippet of code, refresh my browser, and change the colors, the font styles, the spacing, the images and all the elements of the page. It was like code alchemy — like magic!
“She made many beautiful things in her room. Magic. Some people love to make things… Joy was one of those people who rejoiced in making things…”
— Joy’s grandmother, MiMi — her only advocate
Ahhh… but still, I put my true dreams on hold and made my magic contained, in order to build a business that could support my family.
My husband was working full-time at a job that paid the monthly mortgage, while still pursuing his dream of being a writer (by now, a reality). I needed to bring in enough money to pay the rest of the bills.
This is how we go to sleep again and put off becoming our true selves. We get caught up in the “grind” cycle of work, hustle to get the work, do the work, network/hustle to get more work, etc. No time to be our authentic selves. No time yet to reach the top hierarchy of Maslow’s hiarchy of needs: the freedom phase in which we have lots of time to think and create and think and create…
In Joy the Movie, Joy, the woman, asks her best friend-since-childhood:
“What happened to us, Jackie? All the things that we used to dream about? I feel like they keep getting farther and farther away.”
Yes, women entrepreneurs have to fight to keep their dreams alive enough to become reality. The true self gets put aside in order to take care of everyone else.
Had I been a male entrepreneur, maybe I would have had the free time to study the Internet more and maybe I would have realized that these new things called “domains” could possibly be the keys to wealth: like domain names that had not been bought yet: like TV.com. Or I could have been an early affiliate marketer or could have set up businesses based on domain names like Blinds.com or CuffLinks.com.
Or if there had been Angel Investors way back then, who believed in start-ups owned and operated by women, maybe things would have been quite different, in a good and wealthy way, for me and my family. But…
Instead of having free time to think and explore the Internet of the 1990s and all of its untapped potential I was still working more than ever: networking at local events to try to find clients to hire me; marketing my business; doing my own accounting; creating my own graphics, researching, learning SEO, planning, brainstorming, and of course, programming the websites. And I was a mother of a young child and a wife who cooked, cleaned the house, washed the dishes, etc. I was that business owner described in the book The E-Myth Revisited who does it all and burns out by the fifth year in business unless she hires a good team (it’s a good thing I read that book then). I began thinking about how I could grow the business without going crazy trying to keep up with it all by myself. It was only logical to hire an assistant. I already knew how to hire to find the best people, thanks to the former job I had by now quit.
Fortunately, I met a woman at a business women’s conference, who advised me. I am forever grateful to her. I had been thinking of implementing many things she advised and to hear her tell me I was right was validating.
In the movie, there’s a sub-plot in a soap opera that Joy’s mom, Teri, watches every day with the main character named “Danica.” Sometimes Joy catches a scene here and there, like when she fixes the plumbing that’s leaking in her mom’s room. This scene symbolizes the focus a Maker/Creator/Dreamer/Entrepreneur must have:
“Danica can direct her powers anywhere Danica chooses. THAT is the power of Danica.
I directed my powers and focused when I returned from that conference, after listening to that angel-mentor-woman-entrepreneur advise me— I was on fire! I was so excited to implement my ideas. First I began by hiring two web designers who could also code. At this point, I became the project manager and creative art director and account manager of our projects. I still did the SEO for our website projects.
My business tripled. But as I grew and empowered myself, my marriage disintegrated. Together for 26 years, since high school, we finally grew apart. It wasn’t as simple as that but yet it was.
Just as I had found myself, found my power and was building my empire, gas prices rose, the housing market collapsed and the recession hit. The phone wasn’t ringing as much anymore. And then it stopped ringing. I could barely hang on. Many, many women business owners I knew had to take full-time jobs at coffee shops, as cashiers at banks, as waitresses just to keep food on the table for their families.
Thanks to the angels in my life (you know who you are), we survived that recession. My business is now better than it was before the recession and I’m very grateful for that. I’m still working 70+ hours a week but that’s going to change soon, in a good and still profitable way.
Dear Entrepreneurial Woman: I shared all this to tell you that you, too, can make it. If you ever feel like giving up, hold on. Just like Joy Mangano, and just like me, you’ll have to deal with crap and be smart enough to know when you’re getting the short end of the stick instead of the end that’s dipped in chocolate and sprinkles. You may have to stay up late to meet deadlines or to finish the blog post you started earlier in the day. You’ll have to wait patiently to create. You’ll steal away chunks of time, in between taking care of your family, your clients, keep up your reading, doing the laundry, the grocery shopping, the cooking and cleaning (unless you’re fortunate enough to be able to hire a nanny and a housekeeper and a private chef). In between taking care of your family, you’ll take care of yourself. If you don’t, who will?
Find ways to declare your dreams and special powers out loud — to friends, to family and to yourself. Write a journal and keep writing about your goals as though they have already happened. By the power of belief, you will make these things come true.
What is my true self now, at this point in time?
My true self is a Creative who writes her way to great personal wealth and happiness for herself and her loved ones. I am a Creative and Expert who takes the knowledge I possess and years of experience and stellar results for my clients and mashes it all into extremely helpful online courses that Dreamers purchase to learn from and make their own dreams come true. I am becoming the Matriarch of my family on my mother’s side and my father’s side.
“You can’t let the practical get you down. You gotta keep going to what you LOVE.” — Tony, Joy’s husband
“That’s true. That’s what my father taught me.” Joy replies.
I’ll fast-forward through the movie and pass over the part where Joy wakes up — literally and figuratively — after having dreamed of her child-self who told her in the dream:
“Seventeen years… Think about it WE’VE been hiding for 17 years. Seventeen years. We used to make things, 17 years ago, then that all stopped. What happened? When you’re hiding, you’re safe because people can’t SEE you. But, funny thing about hiding. You’re even hidden from yourself.”
— Little girl Joy, subconsciously telling grown-up Joy the truth that will set her free.
Then Joy wakes up. She literally wakes up and figuratively wakes up. She’s like sleeping beauty awakened by her own super power subconscious. She was right: she didn’t need a prince. She kissed herself awake.
As the story progresses, Joy reaches a culminating point. Suddenly, life feels really difficult. Taking care of everyone, trying to pay all the bills with a job that doesn’t pay well as it drains the soul, a broken car that works like magic when kicked in the right places, leaking plumbing in her house, a sick child — all of this builds up and Joy is about to lose her faith when her only advocate, her grandmother, MiMi (Diane Ladd) reminds her:
“…But you must never give up. Ever since you were little, you were born to be the un-anxious presence in the room. And I know that I’m going to live to see you grow to be the successful matriarch that you were born to be.”
Just then, the doorbell rings.
The bell tolls.
It’s Tony, her ex-husband/friend, at her front door. And he tells Joy that he’s got this friend who knows a guy who’s in charge of this new thing that could be the answer in getting her product in front of a lot of potential customers.
That “thing” turns out to be QVC.
And that “lot of potential customers” turns out to be thousands of people who buy her Miracle Mop.
And she starts to achieve something that looks like it will be the answer to her prayers. But then life gets hard again…
You’ll have to watch the movie for the rest of Joy’s story. It’s worth watching. Especially if you’re a woman entrepreneur who’s working hard to make her dreams come true or if you’re dreaming of starting something big.
As for my own story, well, I’ve come back to this essay three times now to finish writing it.
As a woman entrepreneur, I’ve prioritized my family, my clients, laundry, grocery-shopping, cooking dinner, etc. over my writing.
But that’s about to change.
I am taking the step of hiring a housekeeper or maid service to clean my home and help with laundry. I’m ordering groceries online to be delivered to my home. I’m hiring a Virtual Assistant to assist me in the menial but important work tasks that use up a lot of valuable time. I’ve communicated with hubby and son that they have to cook one meal each and clean it all up once a week. All of this will give me at least 20 more hours a week!
It’s like having a wife. :)
The first time I watched Joy, the movie, I became enchanted with its symbolism, magic and truth. It made me weep with grief over the buried dreams of my youth. It re-ignited my soul.
I AM achieving my next dream. Here I go!
