How to Find and Follow Your Joy

I remember seeing my mother’s satisfying smiles as she watched us from her favorite chair. She would say to me, “It's all I ever want … to see my family together having fun.” Our family is lucky that way. We are all creative and curious Wild Things.

As women, whether we are motherly to many or a few, the delight we experience in having those whom we love around us cultivates boundless joy.

There is an expansive feminine nature that ripples through us all. It’s filled with source-inspired creativity, insights, and a map, which guides the birth of our true joys in life, connecting us.

I want to expand on that connected thought … you know how you pay attention to the dreams you have a right before you wake up? I do the same.

These flashes of insight are a powerful message board, filled with hidden, convoluted, and in-your-face memorandums from your spirit and body.

These insights contain an imperative voice. They are the guidons of your joy.

The Sunday before Mother’s Day my inner message board lit up!  These dream-evoked memos, took me back to a couple of poignant motherly moments.

 I saw myself in the surgical room with an angel of a nurse taking clippers to my waist-long hair. She shaved it all off. Nothing was left but crew-cut nubs.

She then compassionately straight razored my scalp into sleek and shiny baldness. For not a single hair on my head could be in the way of the surgeon’s scalpel. A man who was about to save my life through ten hours of extensive and dangerous brain surgery.

The next scene was of the day before that surgery. It was a visceral memory as I dreamt of my children toddling into my hospital room for what easily could have been their final visit with me.

Christopher, two-years old, stayed low to the ground, examining the wheels on the hospital bed. He’d popped up now and then so I could kiss him and tousle his blonde hair. He’d pull my hand downward so I could look at the wheels with him.

Alicia, age three, climbed into bed with me. Her hands and eyes studied my face with detailed curiosity. She looked through me, as if some part of her knew; absorbing me. I soaked in every detail of her soft curls, hazel eyes, and button nose. I silently vowed to never forget their faces. It was the eternal snapshot of a mother’s love.

(As I write this, I feel my mother’s hand of Light on my shoulder….)

I wasn’t afraid to die. I was calm. Wistful. Resigned.

Death was the likely path. Still, I didn’t want to leave these babes so soon.

I awoke from these memory-filled dreams with tears and a body soused with joy. There was no sadness. Only a joyous, relieving exhale. For now my children and I are older and life is connected in a new way.

Yet, as you know, life has wooly and wicked turns. She has taught me how to keep my intuition sharp and how to hug her curves, as she spins me around into the embodiment of her mysteries.

Just when you THINK life will go this way, she spins you into a different orbit. I actually like that about her. Change is life and life is enriched by choices.

That’s why you mustn't THINK … instead, listen to your intuitive voice. It has the map.

I’ve also discovered that no matter what experiential treasure she plops at my feet ( or in my face), there is joy. Even if I have to dig for it.  Joy is in everything.

It eventually seeps through the reluctant crack of a hardened heart or horrific experience. Joy KNOWS the way out. Joy unfailingly finds the path of least resistance. You don’t have to work so hard. Joy knows the way.

And so I choose to awake with joy and gratitude. I trust you do too. Even if joy is playing hide and seek, I’ve learned how to conjure it. I know you do too.

Gratitude is the key that awakens joy, as joy is a truth regarding our nature and cannot be snuffed out.

At times we need to go to nature to rediscover our own, surrounded by woods with cradling limbs. Minute and majestic rocks ground and fortify us. To gaze at or float within the flowing waters of this earth is healing. We never loose our joy or our nature. It does, at times, get covered with clutter and derailed by curious curves.

Yet, we have our intuition to see us through. It is the map reader of our soul’s steps.

On this Mother’s Day, ponder the curves life has offered you. She is a powerful teacher and healer. She ebbs and flows; gives and takes away.

Both joy and life reminds us of how delicate and sturdy we are in their midsts. We must relish each moment, as the truest indestructible part of us is always loved and safe, no matter what.

Remember the moments of joy you’ve discovered that have come during or after you’ve evoked your strength and accelerated out of life’s curves. To do that makes the straightaways even sweeter and rich with the clarity of new vistas.

There is so much world out there. There is too much life in you to be sad or burdened. Emotions are a choice.

When sadness comes, listen to it. She has oracular messages too. Goddesses always do. Sit with her and then, when you’re ready, move things out of your way. When you lighten your load, you lighten your heart. You free your soul and you must stay free. 

As you lighten your heart natural joy emerges, dusty or exuberant as it may be.

Own it.

Breathe it in.

Share it.

Life and the things and people you experience are reflections of your joy. Some are contrast, reminding you that you are in charge of your joy, your life, and your intuition. 

Listen to yourself. Watch how you and other people love and care for you; take that in. See how it all feels to you. If you’re around those who don’t love and care for you, love yourself more and do the obvious. Move along. Let yourself be loved (by yourself first) and more love will both come from and toward you.

If something is not working, stop fighting what is and move along with the steps revealed by your inner map.

When you love and accept yourself and embrace life on her terms, you’re connected. Joy naturally arises. 

On this day and beyond, to mothers of all shapes and sizes, including men and fathers that mother, follow your joy.

The mother in all things births life. Life births joy, and so it goes.

To the motherly powers of this world, seen and unseen, and to the motherly powers within you, I send gratitude and joy.