Practicing Joy: The Healing We Never Knew We Needed

“You’re not healing to better handle trauma, pain, anxiety, and depression. You’re used to those feelings. You’re healing so you can accept happiness and joy back into your life.”

My therapist told me that—and I’ll be honest, I will never be the same.

We talk so much about healing as if it’s bootcamp for surviving hard times. Like we’re in training to be better warriors, more emotionally durable, tougher. But what if healing isn’t about hardening at all?

What if true healing is about softening?

Because here’s the thing: most of us are already experts in pain. We’ve memorized the terrain of heartbreak, betrayal, overwhelm, grief, and anxiety. We know how to exist in survival mode. We’ve built homes there.

But joy?
Happiness?
Peace?

Those feelings can feel like foreign languages—beautiful, but untrustworthy. We almost don’t know what to do with them when they show up.

We’ve learned to hyper-fixate on the lows. It’s a survival reflex, maybe even a protective one. And on top of that, we’ve developed a chronic fear of missing out (thanks, social media), where seeing someone else win sometimes makes us feel like we’re losing.

Are we competitive by nature? Absolutely. But beneath that competition is often a deep longing: to feel free again.

To feel like we did as kids—curious, wild-hearted, full of wonder. Back when we chased butterflies instead of deadlines, and our joy wasn’t measured by productivity. Back when the world hadn’t yet handed us the heaviness we now carry.

For women especially, this message hits harder. We’ve been raised, praised, and programmed to carry not only our own burdens, but everyone else’s too. We’re the emotional pack mules of the family, the office, the world.

And somewhere in all that carrying, we forgot that we are allowed to feel joy.

Joy doesn’t have to be earned.
It doesn’t have to be perfect.
And it doesn’t make you irresponsible or selfish.

Sometimes practicing joy—yes, practicing it like a skill—feels better than soldiering through another day of “handling it all.”

Let yourself dance without a reason.
Let yourself rest without guilt.
Let yourself be without needing to justify it.

The real magic isn’t in how well you handle pain.
It’s in how gently you allow yourself to receive happiness again.

So if you’re tired of holding the world, put it down.
It’ll keep spinning.

And maybe, just maybe, you’ll remember what it’s like to look at life not through the lens of what broke you—but with the wonder of the girl you used to be.

You’re healing, not to endure more—but to feel free again. And that, my friend, is worth everything.