Joy is the most vulnerable emotion

She's kind of a monster

Brene Brown said one time, “Joy is the most vulnerable emotion. And if you cannot tolerate joy, what you do is you start dress rehearsing tragedy."

She disrupted my previous concept of joy as this happy-clappy-feel-good sensation that we’re all taught to chase as one of the main points of this life.

I believe her.

In this season of healing, I’m learning to pull the thread on joy in a new way. And it’s terrifying. Like a bait and switch.

I welcome a story in my body that feels good. Hard things have been faced, felt, and integrated to deliver me to this moment. But then Fear enters stage left, just to whisper, “It could all be taken away, you know…You can’t trust it.” Then Shame saunters over, “Look around, how dare you feel joy right now when others are miserable?”

Photo by Aditya Saxena on Unsplash

I used to dive head first into the hardest parts of my pain, assuming wrestling it to the ground was the only way to heal. Now I’m learning, through somatic experiencing, that moving in and out of the pain while sitting with the parts of my body that feel neutral or positive is showing my nervous system how to heal in a way that actually rewires my body.

Vulnerable joy is a practice that heals.

When joy bubbles up, may we sit with both its strength and its fragility.
May we resist the desire to make demands of it.
May we accept that joy makes us nauseous as it strips away our sense of control.
May our souls simply smile at the arrival of a gift.

All we can do is open our hands to receive.

Photo by Marcus Wallis on Unsplash

when all you’ve known
is protection and fear
a nervous system
finds joy odd

can we control it?
manipulate it to
fit what we believe
is true?

no

joy is a monster
who rolls her eyes
at any story that
seeks to trap her
in old ways

joy is scary
and wild
and good
and ridiculous

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