Today I Choose Joy!
Curiously Exploring the Light and Darkness Within
—Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock
I’ve made it my practice to choose joy every day.
And when I say “joy”, I’m not talking about a state of happiness and positivity. Joy to me means being grateful for the full range of human emotions that I experience. Grateful for the gift of feeling each and every one of them and for the wisdom each one brings.
It wasn’t always this way.
Joy is my middle name. It’s also the street I now live on. I call the land I steward the Compound of Joy. I used to joke that because my name was Joy and I lived on Joy Road, I was effectively a compound of Joy. The name stuck and has grown ever more meaningful as my journey with joy progressed.
For the first 50 years of my life, I really didn’t embrace my middle name or truly understand and embody the state of being that it represented. In fact, I actively hated it and when I married my first husband, I changed my name from Katherine Joy Greer to Kate Greer Ginsberg, effectively ridding myself of a given name that didn’t define or resonate with me.
Mother’s Day 2008: A Powerful Inflection Point on My Journey
Then on May 11, 2008 — Mother’s Day — my mother quite literally “took the A Train”, ending her life and her 20+ year battle with depression. This sudden, deeply tragic event woke me up to the fact that I wasn’t happy in my life and that if I didn’t take action, I’d likely experience my own version of her downward spiral.
Bearing witness to her journey, one in which joy, childlike wonder, and superhuman strength was erased and replaced with depression, anxiety, and despair, helped me to realize that happiness is an inside job.
That there’s no magic amount of love or money, no magic job or accomplishment, no magic penis or vagina that will make you happy if you are not able to take the courageous hero or heroine’s journey through your darkness to find the light and joy within your soul.
When she killed herself, I was 42 years old and had all the trappings of what should have been an amazing life. And yet, I was deeply unhappy.
Her suicide was a powerful inflection point in my life. I saw two paths forward for myself. I could choose to go on Oprah or Ellen or Jerry Springer and be the poster child for tragic mother stories. Or I could recognize the gift hidden inside this devastating loss.
I could use the wisdom and insights I’d gained from witnessing her heroine’s journey and mental health struggles and use that as fuel for my own self-healing. For doing the deep inner work on myself that tragically she had been unable to do.
Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes: My One-Woman Mission to Find Joy Within
I chose the harder path. I started to do an inventory of what was making me unhappy and embarked on a path of self-evolution.
I started with the “easy” things. I lost 50 lbs, got into the best shape of my life, and rid myself of chronic spinal pain that had left me feeling far older than my 42 years.
Still miserable.
I got a new dream job building a purpose-driven community for experienced workers navigating the tectonic changes in the workplace and job market.
Still miserable.
I’d changed everything I could in myself and finally was left with the reality that my 14-year marriage was not healthy nor was it bringing me joy. That the hedonistic lifestyle we were living wasn’t me. That we were literally consuming ourselves to emptiness.
I got amicably divorced in 2012 before conscious uncoupling was even a glimmer in Gwyneth’s goopy eye. I healed myself of the patterns of addiction and unconscious consumption that were stealing my joy and sapping my life-force.
MacShever the Joyful Fixer
And that’s where the real work and the curious exploration of joy began.
I reclaimed my maiden name — Katherine Joy Greer — bought a house on Joy Road and started to explore and reconnect with my joy.
At first, I was a joy-and-light-seeking missile. Little Miss Positivity. The Queen of finding the silver lining. Lightning-fast with an uplifting personal story, a pep-talk, or a reframe. I was MacShever the Joyful Fixer.
Joy at this point in my journey meant a state of happiness, positivity, and light.
I took it upon myself to find the positive in all things. To be an alchemist whose calling it was to turn all darkness into light. I looked at all the darker emotions and experiences in myself and others as energy to be shifted—something that needed to be fixed by applying joy.
I was on this joy crusade for about 10 years. Joy and positivity were my superpowers. My personal brand attributes.
In 2018, I embarked on an epic 30-day around-the-world pilgrimage that started on the 10th anniversary of my mother’s suicide.
I contemplated writing my own Book of Joy as a celebration of my 10 years of courageous self-evolution and profound personal transformation.
I announced to the world that I was a voice for transformation, a catalyst for finding the joy within. That I had woken up to the reality of my true calling and a big new self-identity as if discovering I was 8 months pregnant and had no idea.
I thought the birth was imminent.
Little did I know that I was facing a gestation timeline that was more elephantine than human.
Being with Darkness: A Mindfulness Practice
Over the past 14 months, my journey has taken me to some really dark places. Places where previously I’d never dared to venture.
I’ve learned to recognize and be with my own darkness and darker emotions. To be lovingly curious about them. To invite them to reveal to me the wisdom, insights, and gifts they contain.
Big emotions, especially the darker ones—sadness, anger, fear, envy, etc — are like children tugging on your apron when you’re trying to cook dinner. If you ignore them or give them token attention, they will keep tugging.
It’s not about fixing them or shifting them from darkness into light. Their invitation is for you to connect deeply with them in a state of loving curiosity and witness them until they reveal what they are there to tell you.
They want to be seen. To be met. Once they are, I’ve found that they come into balance, finding their place in our psyches and no longer define us by their absence or over-expression.
This does not mean getting lost in them. Because of my family history with mental health and the intensity of what I’d witnessed in my mother and brother’s decades-long battles with depression, I was afraid that if I allowed myself to go deeply into sadness or anger I might never emerge. That these darker emotions could be all-consuming and soul-erasing.
I’ve come to understand that engaging with my darker emotions is like a mindfulness practice. My opportunity is to witness these emotions as a curious, objective observer rather than becoming their victim.
Today I Choose Joy
My journey of late has seen more than its share of darker emotions. My inner landscape has been beset by emotional weather systems that mirror the intensity of those plaguing our little blue planet in the Climate Change era.
I’m navigating these emotions like a fearless captain with her feet firmly planted on the deck of her ship and her eye on the horizon as she fearlessly sails toward her north star. I know that no matter what the universal weather patterns have in store for me I have what it takes inside me to rise to the challenges that lie ahead.
I’ve noticed that as I’ve grown more able to be with my whole self and with all the emotions in the spectrum, I’ve become far more comfortable with and accepting of the emotions and experiences of those I meet on this journey.
Instead of viewing everyone I meet as someone to be helped or fixed, I recognize that the greatest gift and honor is to simply be with and bear witness to what shows up. To receive the wisdom of the full richness of life’s experience. If you’d like someone to walk shoulder to shoulder with you and bear witness to your courageous hero or heroine’s journey or need a listener or a sounding board, I’d be honored to be of service.
So today I choose joy.
And everyday is today!
If this post resonates with you, you can connect with me on Medium, Instagram, and LinkedIn or visit my site to learn more about Contagious Vulnerability and book time with me.
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