Welcome to Find Your Joy

Hi, you're listening to Find Your Joy. If you're looking for ways to thrive rather than survive in a world that can seem rather chaotic, you're in the right place, we will be sharing stories of our own, as well as those from guests who have found ways to bring hope, healing and freedom into places where trauma has impacted them. I'm Ali, author of the Art of Healing Trauma, and I'm here to remind you that life is sweet. Now, let's dive in and find ways to create our joy.

Hi, I'm Ali, and this is Find Your Joy. So, as I'm trying to figure out ways to even start this, you know, I've got things that I want to say, and that I wanted to share, and I have my stories and other people's stories. And how do we figure all this out? Right? Like we're all trying to make life work and trying to find ways to not just be not pissed off and not, you know, feeling trapped are in pain all of the time, but actually joy, like, there's actually joy out there. And it's really ours for the taking. And so I wanted to figure out a way to, I don't know, express that I suppose, find it, what actually gives us joy, what gives me joy? What makes me happy, and joy doesn't necessarily need to be in the middle of everything. It's all happy clappy, it's about more really, how do I find that whatever's going in my on in my life? How do I be able to live while I'm living? How do we get to a place where I'm actually enjoying this mud ball and this ride and all the things that are going on whatever my health is like, or my family's health, or my finances, or whatever's going on in my relationships, or any of that, if I can't find a way to actually have joy in my life to have moments that I love and that I am excited about and that I can actually look forward to things and what are we doing? It started my whole thought about this started.

For those of you who can see me over my back shoulder is if there are four books. So I started writing, as a co author, in in a couple of the series of the well series who have Well, women of worth is what it's about, or is the what that stands for. And the first couple of books that I was a co author in, people like to know where you came from, and how you got here. That's the point of it, I get it. That's those are really good concepts. And then the next one I was in was family tree. And it was about Mother and son relationships. It's about the trials and tribulations and the triumphs. That's what it's all about. So I wrote those and I wrote these short stories, and I talked a little bit, you know, life with a brain injury life with a child living with some cognitive challenges, just all the things that people face in life, right? I mean, everybody's got their own story. Everybody's got their own tragedy that they were able to be triumphed over in some way. And then I started on my book. Now when I started writing my book, I thought it was going to be unforgiveness. That's where I started it from. I'm going to just read right now, just a little excerpt from this. From the introduction, really of the book, I started this book thinking I'd be writing about forgiveness, and the healing that it brings, and their stories of forgiveness throughout here for sure. As I continued to write though, it became clear to me that all of the different paths and experience throughout my life had created a kaleidoscope of healing. It was never about one prayer, one hurt to forgive one sacred moment, one counseling session, one prescription diet, exercise, regime, close friend, religious experience, path of enlightenment, psychic reading prophetic word, course, or courses or studies in specific fields. It wasn't a day with a big one big aha moment. That was not my experience. But instead, a series of them, all of them just little moments where I felt like I had some success. I had a win, you know, just I add a win. Or even that I got an idea for a moment, that maybe there could be a way that I can make this all work.

So when I started to write my book, I started off it kind of grew and it developed and I remember my my publisher, Julie, Julianne from influence publishing, she said, you know, really your story is a really a lot about PTSD and and overcoming that. Maybe think about putting some of that in there. And so I did, I thought, okay, so I started writing about that. But I knew really quickly, I didn't want to write about hideous things that had happened to me, like we all can talk about the hideous things that have happened to us. Nobody gets out of this without a lot of crap going down. It just doesn't work that way. Unfortunately, in life, we get hurt, and we hurt others. And sometimes some really nasty things happen. Still, we have to figure out, how do I live through that, and not just live and survive, but how do I thrive? How do I actually make this so that it's workable and joyful, and that life isn't just enduring one crappy thing after another, and just holding our breath and no white knuckling it till we get to the next thing. So that's why my book changed from it was going to be forgive mess, the messy journey of forgiveness. And then more and more PTSD stories started coming. But I really didn't want to talk about the trauma itself, but rather the impact of it. Because for me, that was the big thing and getting over it, I needed to get to a place where I understood, we all know that crappy stuff happens to us. But or in some cases, really traumatic things happen to us, as was my case, as was with probably many people who are listening right now.

The point of it, for me was understanding how that impacted me like, how was it impacting me day to day, right, not just oh, if that happened, and then something like that happened again, I'm gonna freak out worse, because it happened to me the first time I wanted, there's, it's more than that, right? It's, it's, there's triggers, there's things that happen, an actual PTSD, a trauma trigger, living a trauma informed life is very different, I would be all of a sudden, something that would, would trigger me and I would be in that moment in that fear in that terror, the same thing that had happened, when I was originally raped, or whatever it happened to me. However, I didn't have any way to put together to connect that the feelings that I was having at that time, were actually related to the original impact. So that's what a lot of my book is about is my book is really talking about some of the things that happened to my life very briefly, I don't actually go into anything, because I'm not, I didn't want to re traumatize people, I didn't really find value or worth for me, some people do that. That's great. But that wasn't what I wanted to do. And now this is where I'm gonna get back to the three other books that I was in already. So I had just been writing three books about tragedy to triumph. And then I started writing my book, and I was like, I do not want to write or read one more sad story, I just, I just can't. So I will share a bit about things that actually happened. But only on the level of that they happened, I don't, I don't go into details about the experience, or experiences. But rather, I talk about what a trigger trigger looks like, and how I found ways out of it.

More importantly, for me, I came to a place where I was like, I've got to talk about joy. I've got to talk about all the amazing things that are going on in my life, and the lives of my friends, who I shares who were very kind and generous. So let me share some of their story in here. And so that's why my book is called The Art of healing trauma, trauma, finding joy through creativity, spirituality and forgiveness. That was sort of like the trifecta. For me. That's how it came out of it. And so creativity for me, was whether I'm painting or writing a poem, or writing a story or writing a song. Sometimes people organize cupboards, sometimes people cook, some people like to bake. Some people like to sculpt some people, they might want to build fences really well, they might want to organize a cupboard. There's all kinds of ways that we can be creative. And there's all kinds of ways that we can pour our energy, the energy that's trying to grab at us and pull us back into some dark place. Those are the things I want to talk about. I want to talk about what gives us life? What gives us joy? What's the thing that helps us through all the other things? What's the thing that not for just make us forget about it like I'm in denial, rather, mindfulness. I'm taking a course on mindfulness right now. And I love this that mindfulness is not about airy, and meditation is not so that everything's going to be rosy and perfect. It's that I can cope. I can cope and feel free. Whether or not it is. So I'm going to tell some stories. I'm going to have friends come and tell some stories. I'm going to have people, maybe you have a story. If you would like to share about how you find your joy, you can contact me at alleyway. art@gmail.com That's a Li, W AR. No, that's hilarious. A li way ar t@gmail.com. And I'm sure that the fabulous people that amplify you will make sure all that information is in there. But that's it for my first one. Here we go. I'm Ali. This is find your joy. T hanks for listening. If you still are good for us, yay, we made it through our first one. Okay, well, that's it and I will talk to you soon. Thanks for coming out. Thanks for listening.