Reconnecting With Yourself: Healing Through Joy

I remember a conversation I had with a woman who had left an abusive marriage. We talked about survival, stress, exhaustion, and the slow ways people can lose themselves without even realizing it.

At one point, she said something that stopped me in my tracks.

“Over the last six months, I stopped listening to music.”

Then she added,

“I stopped singing. I stopped reading. I stopped doing the things that brought me joy.”

Essentially, she stopped living.

Not because she wanted to. Because survival has a way of stripping everything away.

When we’re overwhelmed, heartbroken, burned out, anxious, grieving, or simply trying to make it through the day, joy often becomes one of the first casualties. We stop reaching for the things that make us feel alive. Music. Creativity. Movement. Rest. Play. Connection. Wonder.

Sometimes we don’t even notice it happening until one day we realize we haven’t laughed in months. Or danced. Or read for pleasure. Or rolled the windows down and sang at the top of our lungs.

Then she told me something else. She shared the memory of the moment when things shifted again. She was in the car, windows down, music blaring, singing.

Not healed.
Not magically better.
Still hurting.
Still rebuilding.

But singing.

That conversation stayed with me because so often, we quietly abandon joy during hard seasons. We become productive. Responsible. Efficient. Numb. We tell ourselves we’ll come back to the things we love later, once life settles down. We enter survival mode.

But maybe reconnecting with joy is part of the healing. Maybe it’s not frivolous or childish or selfish. Maybe it’s recovery.

Years ago, I sat in a room full of women entrepreneurs and shared a dream out loud for the first time:

“My dream is to be an inspirational writer and speaker.”

At the time, it felt vulnerable to even say it. Like naming something too big for me.

Then recently, while reflecting on that memory with a friend, she looked at me and asked: “Aren’t you doing that now?”

And I laughed because, in some small but very real way, I am. Not in the polished, grand version I once imagined. But in conversations. In writing. In creating spaces where people feel safe, seen, fulfilled, and empowered.

A question stayed with me.

Not: “Am I accomplishing enough?”

Not: “Am I impressive enough?”

But: “Am I still connected to myself?”

Because I’ve stopped measuring dreams only by achievement and started measuring them by alignment. By whether my life still contains truth, meaning, creativity, connection, and moments of genuine aliveness.

As leaders, coworkers, friends, and human beings, we rarely know the full story. So when given the choice, choose empathy over judgment. Sometimes the most powerful thing we can say is: “Hey, you seem off lately. Are you okay?”

There is almost always room to give people grace and space. Space to breathe. Grace to heal. Space to find their rhythm again. Because sometimes singing in the car with the windows down is not small at all.

Sometimes it’s proof that someone is finally coming back to life.

©2026 Lori Ann King