Unscripted Joy

Category: Compersion

  • The Art of Being Joy

    The Art of Being Joy

    For those of you who have been following my journey, you know that this year I put everything into a piece of land in California. We closed on the acreage in June. It felt like a return home. A place to begin again.

    We built a tiny cabin with care. We planned to do things properly. We were preparing to open a building permit, live lightly on our family land, and slowly work toward building a home.

    Then life shifted.

    A neighbor called in because we had a conversion bus and an RV on our property before the permit was officially open. Suddenly, we had to move off of our family land entirely. What we thought would be a season of grounding became expensive and daunting. There were very real moments when we almost gave up. I almost gave up.

    About a week ago, something softened and strengthened in me at the same time. Not dramatically. Just a quiet decision to stop carrying it as something heavy and instead meet it fully.

    Yesterday, while I sat at a restaurant working on site plans and filling out county paperwork, music played softly in the background. Three different songs came on with the word joy in them. Joy to the World was one of them. After that, I began noticing joy everywhere. Written in lights. Printed on signs. Glowing quietly in windows.

    Before that moment, Joy was not absent. It simply was not loud.

    Later that afternoon, just before the building department closed for the holidays, they encouraged me to submit everything before the new year. New regulations are coming that will dramatically increase the cost of building. The timing mattered. We pushed through.

    And we opened the building permit!

    That single step means more than it might sound. It means I can apply for a temporary residence permit. It means I can now permit the tiny cabin as an as-built structure. Thankfully, I am an overbuilder by nature. The cabin exceeds California building codes. It will pass.

    Progress did not arrive with fireworks. It arrived quietly.

    We still cannot legally be on our land yet. So this Christmas, I am staying in an affordable motel. I am not making it home to the island. Because of my absence, their father Mountain, and his lovely new wife are able to have the kids who are available with them. Our daughter Eden and her bf Elias are hosting Christmas Day at their house.

    Last year, nearly all of us were together. This year looks very different for me.

    As I move toward 2026, the word I am continuing to live is compersion. The practice of allowing joy for others even when something tender is moving through my heart. Not as an idea, but as a way of being.

    This season keeps reminding me that our experience is shaped not only by what happens to us, but by how we respond and what we expect. The choices we make. The meaning we assign.

    Joy does not require everything to be easy. It can live alongside effort, uncertainty, distance, and change. It shows up when we stay present instead of resisting what is here.

    If this season feels layered for you, it’s okay.

    If it feels quieter than other years, or more complex, you are not alone.

    Quick question:

    How are you truly feeling this season? Truly. Maybe you are experiencing grief… or maybe true love is unfolding in your life.

    Whether this is an easy Christmas or not, where is joy showing up in your life right now?

    If you feel inspired to share, I would love to hear your personal experience.

    Sending love from my heart to yours. Merry Christmas Eve. -Joy;)

    PS: though I still do not identify as a “deadhead” I deeply miss the shows and my jam fam. Love you guys!
  • Shine: The Lesson of Compersion

    Shine: The Lesson of Compersion

    Yesterday I wrote about generational curses. About the way grief and silence weave themselves into families, about the shadows that stretch far beyond one lifetime. And on that very same day, Mountain sent me a song.

    Shine by David Gray.

    Mountain, who was once the truest love of my life.

    Mountain, who once walked with me through the full spectrum of love and loss, who witnessed the beauty and the breaking, the trauma and the transformation. Together we weathered storms that reshaped us, standing by one another through moments that might have undone us. Carrying forward the kind of bond that marks a life forever.

    Mountain, who I cherished with the fullness of my love, the way a woman loves a man when she gives everything she has to give.

    Last night, he sent me that song—not as an invitation back, for his path has carried him forward. Just a few weeks ago he married a beautiful woman worthy of his sweet love. She treats him like a king, she adores him, and in her own gentle way she is weaving herself into the fabric of our family. My daughters attended their father’s wedding and came home with stories of laughter, of music, of love. And instead of jealousy, instead of pain, all I felt was gratitude.

    This is compersion.

    “Love is not about possession. Love is about appreciation.” — Osho

    Compersion is the radical opposite of envy—it is joy for another’s joy. It is love that expands rather than contracts. It is not easy. It requires a heart willing to stay open, to feel everything, and to bless what is, rather than clinging to what was.

    I have seen too many families torn apart in bitterness. I have watched love turn to poison, scorn splitting children in half and carving wounds that last for lifetimes. That is not love. That is something darker, something that devours.

    “Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.” — Buddha

    But this—what I feel now—is love. True love is expansive. It celebrates the happiness of those it once held close, even if they now belong to another. It is the grace of compersion.

    And Mountain, in sending me Shine, showed compersion for me. He honored the way I once treated him like a king. He honored the wife, mother, and woman that I was with him. And he blessed me by telling me that it is time to shine again—that I deserve to love and be loved in the fullness of who I am.

    He once said to me, “You are such a juicy, passionate, sexual, wonderful woman. Please share that with somebody who can return it to you.”

    That is compersion: to want for me the love I gave him. To want me to be cherished again.

    “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.” — Eden Ahbez

    And so here I stand, on the eve of my fiftieth birthday thinking of my friend Gill’s sentiment. He recently told me that perhaps my deep connection to Mountain has been the thread that has kept me from loving again. Maybe he’s right. Maybe the gift I give myself this year is to finally untangle that web, to bless it for what it was, and to open myself to what might yet be.

    Because love is not a curse. Love is a light. And tomorrow, I choose to shine.

    “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” — Leonard Cohen

    Reflection for You

    As I write this, I turn to you—dear reader, dear fellow traveler in love and loss. Where in your own life can you choose compersion instead of envy? Where can you bless someone else’s joy, even if it no longer belongs to you? Where can you untangle the old threads and step into the possibility of love again?

    “We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” — Joseph Campbell

    Tarot for My 50th Year

    For this birthday threshold, I choose a card that reflects not only where I have been but where I am ready to go.

    Strength ✨

    Strength is not brute force—it is the quiet, steady power of a woman who has faced both love and loss and has not broken. In this card, she rides or tames the lion not through dominance, but through presence. She embodies grace, sensuality, and the kind of courage that comes from the heart, not the fist.

    This is the card of becoming the lioness—of stepping fully into my beauty, my power, my radiance. It is the reminder that true strength is soft yet unyielding, fierce yet compassionate. It is the strength to forgive, to practice compersion, to let love expand rather than contract. It is the strength to open again, to trust again, to shine again.

    On my fiftieth birthday, this card becomes my vow: to walk into this decade with the lion at my side, not as an adversary but as my own untamed spirit. To live not in fear of what has been, but in celebration of what will be.

    “Courage is grace under pressure.” — Ernest Hemingway

    ✨ And so I invite you: What is the song, the blessing, or the tarot card that calls you to shine in your own life right now?

    From my heart to yours, shine. -Joy