Three Relationship Lessons That Taught Me What Joy Really Is, and Is Not
There was a time when I honestly believed joy might not be meant for me.
I was in a marriage that felt deeply joyless, and because there were spiritual layers wrapped around that relationship, I convinced myself that staying was noble, excepcted, maybe even required. I remember saying out loud that if I was meant to live into my soul’s purpose, then maybe joy just wasn’t in the cards for me in this lifetime.
Whew. I can feel the ache of that now.
What I know today is this: neither God nor my soul works that way. Joy is not a distraction from spiritual growth, an affront to purpose, or something we sacrifice to prove loyalty, strength, goodness, or devotion. Joy is one of the clearest ways the soul gets our attention.
I did not learn that all at once. I learned it in three stages: joyless grief, joy blinders, and finally, real, healthy, aligned joy.
Stage One: Joyless Grief
The first stage was joyless grief. I had confused endurance with devotion and mistaken staying for spiritual maturity. I had placed my own joy outside the circle of what was allowed.
Eventually, I began to understand that my spiritual progress was not dependent on staying in a joyless situation. Maybe my path of liberation was not to keep proving how much I could endure. Maybe my path of liberation was to step out of joylessness.
But ending a miserable marriage did not mean I immediately leapt into joy. Yes, I was relieved. Yes, I knew I made the right choice. And, the grief that came afterward was real.
After my divorce, shared custody meant only having my daughter half time. Every other Friday night, when she was not with me, the silence in the house felt repressive. I remember sitting on the kitchen floor with cheap pizza, cheap beer, and having what could only be described as a full-on pity party with my poor pups.
It was neither elegant nor enlightened, and it was not the kind of thing any sane person puts on a vision board. But it was honest. Sometimes the first step back to joy is not “think positive,” sometimes it’s telling the truth about how joyless something has become.
This is where many purpose-driven women get stuck. They know how to keep going, hold it together, take care of everyone else, manage the room, and be the strong one. Underneath all that competence, there may be grief for the needs they minimized and the joy they delayed.
Joyless grief is not a failure, it’s a signal. It tells us something has been lost, neglected, silenced, or out of alignment for too long. If we are brave enough to listen, grief can become a doorway because grief tells the truth. And truth is often where joy begins to find its way back in.
Stage Two: Joy Blinders
After living through joylessness, I swung hard in the other direction. I became very focused on joy, which sounds healthy on the surface. But this was not yet healthy joy. This was joy with blinders.
In my next relationship, I wanted so badly to experience joy that I ignored what did not feel right. I focused on the bright spots, looked for the good, tried to stay positive, and leaned hard into what I wanted to be true. But the yuck was still there.
I once described it as putting a big googly-eyed smiley face on a mess I did not want to see. I can laugh at that image now, but it wasn’t funny when I was in the thick of it.
Pretending something is joyful does not make it so. Avoiding what hurts does not create healing. Painting a happy face over real pain does not make the pain disappear. It only delays the moment when truth finally rips off the mask.
This is an important distinction in joy work. Real joy can coexist with hard things, but fake joy tries to cover hard things up. Real joy helps us face the truth with more courage. Fake joy keeps us from looking at the truth at all.
Joy blinders can be seductive, especially for women who are tired of suffering. The problem comes when we use the idea of joy to override our own discernment.
We do it when we say, “It’s fine,” even when it isn’t. We do it when we say, “I should be grateful,” instead of admitting we are lonely. We do it when we say, “I’m choosing joy,” when what we are really choosing is avoidance.
That version of joy doesn’t liberate us. It suffocates the real thing. Healthy joy needs room to breathe, and it cannot breathe under the weight of everything we refuse to see.
Stage Three: Real, Healthy, Aligned Joy
The third stage came more quietly. It came through solitude, reflection, healing, and learning to listen to myself in a deeper way. I began to recognize that joy had been the GPS of my soul all along trying to steer me toward what was in my best interests. This was not joy as constant happiness, perfection, or pretending life does not hurt, but real joy. Healthy joy. Aligned joy.
This kind of joy tells the truth. It helps us discern. It says, “This way.” It helps us feel the difference between what expands us and what makes us shrink.
Life will never be free of pain, but there is a difference between the pain that comes with being human and the pain that comes from betraying yourself. Aligned joy helps us notice that difference.
Aligned joy does not demand that everything be easy or perfect. It asks something more honest: Can you stay connected to yourself here? Can you face the truth here? Can you honor what your body knows here? Can you let your joy matter here too?
In my current relationship, joy is a regular part of the conversation. It is not dismissed as frivolous or treated as less important than responsibility, income, logic, or duty.
One of the most meaningful questions my husband ever asked me was about my joy metric. We were talking about business, success, income, and profit, you know all the grown-up spreadsheet things that can make me want to crawl out of my skin, and he directly asked, “But where is your joy metric?”
I felt so seen. He knew what was important for me, even if I was discounting it. He knew that success measured only by income does not speak to my soul. It matters, sure. But if success requires me to abandon my joy, body, creativity, relationships, or inner knowing, then I have to ask: success according to whom?
That question has become central to my work. Where is your joy metric?
Joy is not the only thing that matters, but it deserves a seat at the table. Joy is information. Joy is intelligence. It’s not the decorative icing on top of a serious life. Joy is the aliveness that rises when you live in alignment with who you truly are.
Where Are You in the Joy Journey?
Maybe you are in a season of joyless grief, and some part of you knows you have been enduring what was never meant to be your permanent home. Maybe you are in your own transition and joy seems out of reach for you right now. Maybe you are in a season of joy blinders, trying so hard to stay positive that you have stopped listening to what your body and heart are telling you. Or maybe you are learning to trust real joy again, and notice and even reject the fake kind, the forced kind, and the kind that requires you to deny pain.
Wherever you are, I want you to know this: your joy is not selfish, silly, or a luxury you earn after everyone else is okay. Your joy is part of your guidance system.
If you have spent years being the woman everyone leans on, the one who holds it together and makes life easier for everyone else.
Reclaiming your joy may feel unfamiliar at first, even a bit rebellious. Good. Let it.
Your joy is not asking you to abandon your purpose, stop loving others, or ignore what hurts. It is asking you to stop leaving yourself out of your circle of care, so what is real and healthy can finally grow.
So today, the invitation is simple: Where am I settling for joylessness? Where am I painting a happy face over something that needs my honest attention? And where is real, healthy joy already trying to lead me?
Just begin listening. Your joy may be quieter than your fear at first. It may speak through your body before your mind has language for it. It may arrive in a moment of relief, a breath of truth, a sudden sense of “not this,” or a surprising spark of “yes, this.”
Pay attention. That spark is not random. It’s your soul’s GPS, pointing you home.
Joyfully,
Lisa Summers
PS: If you’d like a meaningful conversation about your current season of joy, let’s talk. Book a free Joy Discovery Call and together we’ll see where your joy might be blocked and where it’s ready to flourish.