Joy Follows Is Here
On July 31st, 2024, I left my marriage for my safety. Today, July 31st, 2026, two years to the day, I published my first book.
Get your copy of Joy Follows: Seven Paths Back to Yourself now on Amazon
I didn't just write my story. I rewrote it. Because we get to do that. We don't have to accept the hand we're dealt. We can fight like hell for a different path and reclaim our joy.
I have filled over twenty journals in my lifetime: twenty years of battling my own mental health, and two years of reclaiming my life and my joy after leaving my marriage. One of them came with me the day I left, thrown into a bag with whatever else I could carry.
Journaling has let me scream despair onto a page: the mess, the fear, the grief, the fury. It is where I wrote letters I'll never send with words I'll never get to say. It is the place I wrote promises to my daughter before she came into the world. The place I begged the universe to someday let her understand the impossible choice I had to make.
And every time I crack an old one open, I meet a girl fighting something different every time, never believing she'd make it out of that chapter.
Yet here I am, writing another page.
I wrote Joy Follows because I wish it was the journal I had. It exists because through every season and every level of crisis, I kept reaching for the same seven things, and they kept bringing me back to myself.
At the time, leaving my marriage while pregnant felt like the greatest tragedy of my life. I truly didn't believe I would make it out alive. Little did I know that the great tragedy was actually the greatest detour of my life, leading me straight to my greatest joy: my Rosie. And I didn't get here alone. My path back was fueled by my love for my child and for my family, who have saved me more times than I can count.
As I wrote this book, I thought about many women, and many versions of myself. But two were on my mind the whole way through. One was the woman at 2am, shattered, searching for something, anything, to hold onto before a life she never chose pulled her under. The other was the woman standing at the beginning of the path, devastated to find herself there once more, terrified it might be permanent. I have been both of those women. I wrote this book for them, and for every woman trying to find her way back to herself.
THE SEVEN PATHS
Joy Follows: Seven Paths Back to Yourself is part miniature memoir, part guided journal. Inside are the seven paths I have walked back to myself, every single time: Call in the Cavalry. The Resource Rabbit Hole. The Bit by Bit List. Visualize Your Joy. Find Your Few. Your Comfort Zone. The Anchor.
Each path opens with a chapter of my own story, so you know I've walked it first. Then come the writing prompts and practices that brought me back: pages to build on, breathe with, and once or twice, burn. There's a page you'll tear out and destroy. There's a final page left blank on purpose, because it's yours.
WHO THIS BOOK IS FOR
Any woman trying to find her way back to herself: after loss, after leaving, after grief or postpartum or the kind of season that doesn't have a name yet. It's built to meet you where you are. Walk all seven paths, or choose just one and come back to the rest whenever you need them. There are no rules here. Healing isn't linear, and neither is this book.
These paths aren't cures. They aren't promises that it won't get hard again.
I can't promise you pain won't come. It will. That's not pessimism, that's the weather. But I know what follows. Joy. It's not a matter of if. It's a matter of when.
And one of the hardest truths I've had to accept is that the work never stops. I'll be using these tools for the rest of my life. Even now, as I publish this book, I'm reaching for some of them. I found my joy, and I'm still working at it.
Joy Follows is a 115-page paperback, $15.99 on Amazon. A digital edition will come down the road, but paper came first on purpose: this book is meant to be held, written in, and once or twice, burned.
This book is the closest I can get to reaching out a hand, picking you up off the floor, and telling you there is life and love and joy beyond this.
Two weeks ago, I wrote here that on July 31st, I'd get to hand you the proof.
Well, here it is.
Joy follows. It always does.
