Let Joy In: Why Joy Is a Vital Part of the Healing and Wholeness Journey

Subscribe

Click to Listen to the Story

Segment 2: Returning to Wholeness

Episode 4: Let Joy In

“In healing, joy is not the reward. Joy is part of the medicine.” – Dr. Kidi

By the time I reached the infusion center, the afternoon had folded itself into that familiar quiet. Cool air met me at the door, sharp with disinfectant. The pumps clicked like metronomes. Clear bags hung in neat rows, each one a small promise. Nurses moved from chair to chair in worn sneakers, hands sure on tubing and tape, voices low, faces turned toward each patient with the calm of people who have learned how to carry fear. The room held its own kind of order, of routine care and the shared decision to keep going.

She was already there in Room Seven, the chair turned toward the window. A yellow cardigan rested on her shoulders, thinned at the cuffs and soft from too many washes, still determined to grace her with warmth and color. Her chart read forty-eight, metastatic breast cancer, third-line treatment. Her body told the truth in small ways, and every step was a sacred choice. She moved slower with intention and sipped her strength only when needed. She cradled her left arm, threaded with an IV, close to her heart. 

Fatigue lived deep in her bones. Still, her face stayed calm and warm and offered softness. A quiet kind of courage that did not need to prove itself but lived breath by breath, moment by moment.

Music drifted from her radio on the tray beside her crackers and ginger ale. It was an old song, one that seemed to know the back roads of her heart. She listened with intent, head angled toward the radio as her fingers tapped on the blanket, keeping time with the melody. Her feet, propped up on the recliner, joined in, tracing half circles to the beat. She wasn’t performing for anyone. She was simply letting the song meet her where she was, taking in the sound that cultivated her joy.

When I came closer, she looked up, smiled, and said, “Hey, Doc,” as if my arrival was another joy the day had been holding for her. I was still a medical student on oncology rotation, yet she always insisted on calling me “Doc.”

You missed the good part."

Puzzled, I asked, "The good part of what?" 

She tipped her chin toward where the sound was coming from. "This song. Listen. It will come again."

So I paused and waited for the good part. 

Next to her chair, a man in a baseball cap stared at the floor, gripping the arms of his seat as if the chair were the last reliable thing he could hold. Yet his toes were also tracing half circles to the rhythm of the song, just as hers were.

She turned her head towards his toes and said, “Thank you for dancing with me.” 

His eyes blinked with the intensity of jumping out of heavy thoughts. He looked down at his toes as if he were meeting them for the first time and smiled before he could respond. She smiled back and kept mouthing the lyrics. Some were wrong, most were close enough, none of them careful. She simply sang and spread her joy.

I asked the usual questions.

Nausea? Pain? Fever? Chills?

She answered with plain honesty, no drama, no denial.

Then her gaze drifted toward the window, where fall leaves were wrestling with the wind.

“Look at that,” she murmured. “They hold on like they mean it, then let go like they mean that too.”

We all laughed. 

I have watched people disappear into illness.

I have watched people fight it, bargain with it, grit their way through it, pray through it, cry through it.

But the woman I watched in room seven was special.

The scans were real.

The fatigue was real.

The line in her arm was real.

And so was the way her eyes kept finding joy in whatever was still living right there in front of her.

A song.

A leaf.

A neighbor’s nervous foot keeping time.

A bewildered medical student.

And anything else that cultivated joy.

When I left, music was still playing.

The pump was still clicking.

Her fingers were still tapping.

Yet her eyes were closed now, her face relaxed, and her mouth held a quiet smile, as if the music had reached a place the disease could not touch. In that moment, it was clear that her day was not something to simply survive. It was something to live. And joy was woven through it.

In life and in returning to wholeness, joy is not a reward waiting at the finish line. It is part of the medicine we carry with us on the way. I am writing about this because so many of us postpone joy until we feel better, stronger, healed, or finished. But waiting to let joy in can keep us feeling fragmented for longer than we need to. Joy helps us stay connected to ourselves while we are still becoming, and that connection is one of the ways wholeness returns.

In this segment, we are turning toward reclaiming what belongs to us, including joy. So before we go further, let us pause and name what we mean by joy.

Let Us Name Joy

When people asked me what I wished for my children, I often said, “I just want them to be happy.” I meant more than a good mood. I meant a life that could hold pleasure, contentment, peace, and a steady sense of being okay inside themselves.

But the longer I lived, the more I realized I had been reaching for something more specific. Something sturdier. Something that could live in them even through the hard bumps of life.

So, before we go further, let’s name these states clearly, because understanding the language you use for your inner life is a powerful tool for returning to wholeness. Once you can name what you are feeling, you can recognize it when it appears, and you may choose how to respond to let joy in.

Pleasure is a weather.

It comes from what feels good right now, a sweet bite, a warm touch, a compliment, a win, a funny clip. Pleasure is real, but it is short-lived. Studies on emotion duration show that positive emotions often last from seconds to hours, depending on the moment. The brain adapts fast to good feelings. There is a name for this: hedonic adaptation, the pull back toward baseline after something pleasant. With repeated exposure, the effect drops unless there is novelty or a pause. So pleasure often needs more to stay present. It is conditional, and chasing it can become compulsive.

Pleasure says, “This feels good right now.”

Happiness is a season.

Happiness often rises after something good happens, then settles back down. Even big life events can lift our mood for a short time before we return to our usual emotional baseline. When it depends on outcomes or achievements, it changes as life changes. So it is conditional.

A well-known study from the 1970s looked at people who won the lottery. At first, their happiness increased sharply. They felt excited, relieved, and hopeful. But within about a year, most of them returned to feeling about the same as before they won. The new house became normal. The trips felt routine. What felt special at first became part of everyday life.

Once again, this is hedonic adaptation. Our minds adjust. The high feeling fades. When happiness is tied mainly to outside events, it cannot stay steady for long. The feeling fades, and we start to look for the next thing to bring it back. Happiness says, “My life feels good overall.”

Contentment is the climate. It is the peace of being with what is here without needing it to be different. Researchers describe contentment as a distinct, low-arousal positive emotion that happens when the present moment feels “complete as it is.” That wording matters because it points to contentment as a state, not a permanent trait. It comes in episodes and can shift throughout the day as your context and nervous system shift. Contentment says, “This is enough. I can be with this.”

Joy is the sky that holds it all. It is an inner freedom. It is the steady feeling that finds wholeness in life even when it is hard. So joy is the state we want to cultivate. Not as a reward we earn later, not as someting attached to a condition, but as a foundation that helps us heal and return to wholeness now. It does not only make us feel better. It helps us become stronger and more integrated.

Joy is not just a feeling we enjoy. It has a function. Research on the broaden-and-build theory shows that joy and other positive emotions widen our thinking in the moment and help us build lasting resources over time, like resilience, social connection, and coping capacity. Joy says, “I am whole, even when it is hard.”

Let's summarize.

Pleasure is a weather that will pass through.

Happiness is a season that comes and goes.

Contentment is the climate that forms over time.

Joy is the sky that holds it all, steady and spacious, present through every change.

These differences matter for returning to wholeness, because if we wait to let joy in until everything feels fixed, we may never feel whole while the fixing unfolds.

So perhaps when I said I wished for my children’s happiness, what I was really hoping for was for them to live in joy, not to wait for it as a reward, but to grow into it, to become it, and to carry it as their way of being. I wish for them, as I do for you, to return to joy whenever they can, the way the woman in room seven did, letting joy in right where life was real.

Joy Is Not The Reward, It Is The Journey

Joy does not depend on arriving somewhere or achieving something. It lives in the road itself. Many of us place joy just beyond the next milestone: when I lose weight, when the scan is clear, when the grief softens, when the relationship heals, when I graduate, when I get the job, when I make more money. We make a bargain with our future selves: endure now, and joy will come later. Often what comes later is a brief rise in pleasure or happiness that fades, and then the mind looks for the next goal.

Think about any goal you have reached. You arrive, feel good for a time, and then the feeling settles. A new goal appears. The finish line moves, and you keep chasing.

There is nothing wrong with pleasure, success, or moments of happiness. They matter. But they do not create lasting joy because they depend on external changes that you can hardly control. Joy does not depend on everything going your way. It grows as you stay grounded in who you are, linked to what matters. Joy is an inner light, one you can keep inviting, even while your story is still unfolding.

Joy matters for returning to wholeness. And if you wait to allow joy until everything is fixed, you may move through your whole life in absence. So it is worth your energy to intentionally invite joy in because it forms the foundation of wholeness.

What does Joy Feel like?

You’ll know that joy is in you by how alive, connected, and present you are. It’s less about a big smile and more about a quiet inner “yes.” Here are grounded ways to recognize it.

Your body reflects that you belong under your skin. There is a sense of lightness about you even when you are tired. Your face is relaxed without you forcing it, and you have a natural urge to be at ease and move just as you are because you are unapologetically yourself. Your shoulders are dropped, jaw unclenched, and your hands are open. You grace the room you enter with your safe energy. 

Your mind is not overwhelmed with stories of trauma; instead, it is filled with gratitude. It finds ways to be glad where it is and to make moments matter, even if they show up unplanned. It marinates in a clear, simple appreciation and gratitude without needing to explain. It does not need a perfect story, thing, or place to exist. It just does.

Signs You’re in Joy 

Joy, even when subtle, often looks like this:

Time feels more open.

You don't perform for acceptance.

You feel like giving more than guarding.

You enjoy listening without needing to make a point.

You do not compete.

You feel happy for someone else’s success without envy.

Beauty reaches you through music, light, a child’s laugh, or a kind moment, and you feel connected to something bigger than a task, happiness or pain.

You feel like you are enough and belong in every space you occupy.

You are okay with stillness.

You are your own friend, and you do not use harsh self-talk or say “I hate myself” or “I’m worthless,” because you love who you are as you are.

You still want to grow, but you do it from love, not hate, and your joy comes from giving and lifting others without putting yourself down.

Surprisingly, joy can coexist with hard feelings. You can feel joy and grief, joy and fatigue, joy and uncertainty at the same time. Because, joy is not the absence of discomfort. It is life still moving inside the discomfort.

The Inner Source of Joy

The world will not line up the way we want it to.

Plans shift.

Bodies change.

People come and go.

Hard news arrives without warning.

If your well-being depends on perfect conditions, it will stay fragile. Joy needs an inner source you can return to even when life is uncertain.

Nothing about the situation in Room Seven felt ideal. She sat among strangers whose lives, like hers, hung in their IV bags. If joy required ease, she would not have had access to it. Yet she did. Not because the day was light, but because she kept choosing where to place her attention.

A song.

A rhythm.

Leaves moving near the window.

A stranger’s foot keeping time.

She practiced joy inside the life she had. The outside stayed hard, and something inside her stayed open.

Everything you feel from an external trigger through your senses happens within you. Dream of a monster and your body tightens. Picture a quiet beach and your body relaxes.

Imagine someone cuts you off in traffic.

Before you name a feeling, your senses are already at work. They gather information and move it inward fast and clear.

You see the car shift into your lane.

Your brain reads the distance, the speed, the timing.

You hear the change in road sound, a horn, your breath catching.

Your body moves next.

Your hands grip the wheel.

Your foot hits the brake.

Your heart speeds up.

Your shoulders tighten.

Your jaw sets.

Your nervous system prepares you.

Only after all of this do emotion and meaning arrive.

Fear. Anger. Both at once.

Your senses are not designed to create joy. They are designed to protect you. They bring you the outside world so you can stay alive. If your joy depends only on what they report, your inner world will rise and fall with each shift around you. That is a stressful way to live. It is what sends us searching for something outside ourselves to calm what is happening inside.

The important thing is this: your reaction began with perception, not emotion. And that is where your power lives. When you notice the sequence, you can meet yourself sooner.

You can slow your breath.

You can loosen your grip.

You can let the moment pass without turning it into a story your body has to hold.

Awareness turns reflex into choice.

Choice becomes freedom.

That is how joy returns.

Not as something handed to you, but as something you create with intention.

Intentional breath, stillness, and reflection are practices that keep your inner world steady. They help you stay aware of what rises within you, so the outside world does not become the author of your experience. You learn to feel the signal without losing yourself in it.

When you invest in your inner life, you become less ruled by circumstance and more rooted in who you are.

Joy becomes a practice.

It takes intention.

It takes discipline.

It takes a pause.

And it is worth it.

Because joy is not extra. It is part of what makes life feel whole, and it is the ground where healing grows.

How to Let Joy In to Reclaim Wholeness

Joy is not something we grab once and keep forever. It grows when we root it in what lasts, and when we return to it on purpose.

Here are some ways to create, cultivate and sustain let joy:

1. Create a strong joy foundation

Joy grows best in what lasts, not in prizes that fade. Many of us are trained to chase status, riches, or constant pleasure. Those can feel good for a moment, but they do not hold us steady. You reach one goal, feel a lift, then another goal appears. You only keep moving towards a mirage.

A more reliable path is to root joy in pillars that do not run out. Here are some you can cultivate:

Relationships: Family, chosen family, friendships, and community.

Seek out people who let you be yourself, help you practice love, listen with intention, join you in laughter, and show up.

Service: Acts of care that extend beyond yourself.

Look for one small way each day to ease someone’s path, and notice how serving others creates connection to purpose, easies isolation and lets joy in.

Humanity: Our limits, our strength, and our capacity to care and be cared for.

When you struggle, remember you are not alone in your story. We all live with limits. We all carry strength. We all hold the capacity to give and receive care. At our core, we lean toward goodness. Let your limits soften you toward yourself and deepen your compassion for others.

Spirituality or a philosophy of life: A way of seeing the world that gives you meaning and a sense that life and the universe are larger than yourself.

Give a few quiet moments each day to whatever you call sacred. Whether you name it spirit, wisdom, faith, or simple presence, let that connection remind you that you are moving through life with wholeness.

When these pillars are tended, joy becomes a home inside you, not a passing visitor. To live this out, choose one pillar to focus on for a week. Each day, take one small action in that area, notice how it feels in your body, and, if you can, write a brief reflection. The next week, choose another pillar. Keep circling through them as often as you need, and remember you can always begin again.

2. Cultivate Joy with Regular Check-ins

Joy stays near when you live with ongoing questions:

• How am I tending my relationships?

• How am I serving in a way that feels meaningful?

• How am I contributing to humanity?

• How am I nourishing my spiritual or reflective life?

  
  

Use these as a simple practice:

Choose one question each day or week, and pause for a few breaths.

Answer it honestly.

Then take one small action that brings your answer closer to what you hope it can be.

And remember, once again, you can always begin again.

3. Sustain Joy By Creating Habits

Here is where science meets joy. Daily habits can support the release of “feel-good” chemicals in the brain and help joy grow from the inside out. Many of these habits are simple and free, yet easy to overlook because quick fixes give fast but short-lived pleasure. But joy asks for steady practice over time.

Here are habits that help:

Move your body regularly 

Movement and exercise support dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins, which lift mood and build stress resilience.

Get daylight, especially in the morning. 

Natural light boosts serotonin, supports vitamin D, and steadies your body clock, all of which help your mood.

Keep a steady sleep rhythm. 

Going to bed and waking up around the same time helps balance serotonin and dopamine and lowers stress chemistry.

Eat balanced meals with protein and fiber. 

Limit sugar when you can. Sharp shifts in blood sugar can push your body to release stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. Instead, eat balanced meals with enough protein to give your body the building blocks it needs for dopamine and serotonin.

Practice slow breathing or mindfulness. 

Slow, steady breathing and simple mindfulness practices help lower cortisol and support healthy brain chemistry.

Choose safe connection. 

Time with people you trust, real conversation, shared laughter, and being part of a community increase oxytocin and ease stress.

Use warm touch when you want it. 

Hugs, holding hands, gentle touch, or massage can raise oxytocin and calm your nervous system.

Give kindness and help others. 

Acts of care and volunteering boost oxytocin and reward pathways in the brain. 

Practice gratitude or notice wins. 

Naming what is going well, even in small ways, supports dopamine and serotonin over time.

Did you notice what all these habits have in common? They guide your body to release chemicals like dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins that help it work at its best and lower stress, a major driver of chronic illness. They are grounded in science and support the systems that nourish joy from within. They are within reach, cost little or nothing, and when practiced within your limits, do not carry the harmful side effects of quick fixes. Your body’s healing wisdom knows what to do when you listen and respond.

To begin, choose one habit from this list and keep it simple:

• A five-minute walk

• One phone call to someone you love

• Three slow breaths before bed

Stay with that one habit for a week, then add another. Notice how your body feels.

When you drift, begin again.

When you forget, begin again.

When you feel discouraged, begin again.

Joy as a Way of Being

Joy is a practice that keeps you connected to yourself while life is still unfolding. The woman in room seven showed that the outside can stay hard and the inside can still choose life. These habits give you a place to stand when pleasure passes, when happiness shifts, and when contentment is harder to reach.

When I think about what I wish for my children, for the children of the world, and for our shared humanity, it is this: not joy as a prize at the end of struggle, but joy as a way of being they can return to again and again, a joy that lives in the body, in daily choices, and in how we move through hard days.

And this wish is for you too. As you read this, you are invited into the same possibility: that even here, even now, you can practice joy as a quiet inner yes that says, "I am grateful for this life, and I welcome joy in."

Tinfash: Dr.Kidi’s Healing Space 

A space to breathe. A space to listen. A space to begin again.

A Moment for Meditation: Let Joy In

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAyBNHJy37Q

Tinfash 4 C

Calm and Pause. 

Sit or stand comfortably. Let your shoulders drop.

Close your eyes. 

Or soften your gaze.

Count your breath. 

Inhale slowly for four counts. Hold for four counts. Exhale slowly for six counts. Do this for five rounds.

Create distance. 

Notice thoughts or tension like clouds passing. You do not have to follow them. Let them move.

Stay for a few more breaths and notice what shifts when you allow this space.

Journal Invitation

Choose one and write for five minutes.

• Which pillar needs more attention right now: relationships, service, humanity, or spirituality?

• What small habits could help me return to wholeness this week?

Healing Mantra

I am grateful for this life, and I welcome joy in.

Call to Connection

Healing deepens when it is shared. 

Reach out to someone who reminds you of your truth.

Speak honestly.

Listen fully.

Let your presence bring joy.

Visit drkidi.com for more reflections from What Healing Knows.

Follow @drkidi.healing to join a community learning to return to themselves, one gentle moment at a time.

To read my short stories, go to Substack @drkidi.

Until next time, 

Trust the journey. Keep listening. Healing knows the way.

With love,

Dr. Kidi

Subscribe