2026: More Joy

Not a resolution; rather, a realignment

A couple of months ago, a dear friend and I were on the phone, both of us in tears, feeling the heaviness of the world.

“Do you know anyone who’s genuinely happy?” I asked.

My friend did not.

“Neither do I,” I replied.

I wasn’t referring solely to 2025. No, this melancholy has been seemingly blanketing the collective for nearly a decade.

Not even melancholy. Trauma.

My husband and I often lamented that our wedding was the last happy event in our lives. Not that there weren’t bursts here and there. But nothing sustainable. When it came to happiness, we were sieves.

Moreover, I wasn’t even talking about happiness, per se. I was really talking about joy.

For me, joy isn’t always synonymous with happiness, nor is it solely an emotion. Like love, joy is an energy as well as an emotion. It encompasses gratitude and appreciation, abundance, mindfulness, reciprocity (giving and receiving), and coherence, to name a few.

In my early 40s, I lived in this vibrational alignment. I discussed it in my recent newsletter when I referenced writing while experiencing heartbreak, or writing a scene in which a character is grieving, and the act of writing being joyful even when the process is arduous.

Moreover, when joy was present during life’s occasional adversities, it wasn’t about smiles, but grace.

I have a great deal of trouble writing—or doing anything, really—when the energy of joy isn’t present.

Joy—both emotional and energetic—has been absent from my life for a long time. Trauma smothered it.

And posing the existential question to my friend made me realize I could no longer function without it.

A few weeks after that phone call, I had a profound healing experience. It was akin to living with chronic pain for the better part of a decade, only to wake up and discover that the pain was gone. For most of December, when I opened my eyes every morning, I paused, as if waiting to see if this healing was temporary and the pain (in this case, trauma) was returning.

It didn’t. And I don’t believe it will.

(I’m leaving out the details of this healing experience for the time being. And I understand that trauma can be a loaded word, especially without context. For now, I apologize for the intentional vaguebooking.)

With this healing came clarity, vitality, and a clean slate.

Whereas joy had been smothered, it had breathing room again.

Like, the expanse of an ocean-breathing room.

Around the same time (and I shared in the aforementioned recent newsletter), a TikTok friend shared a video of Alexander Widener, who quit his corporate design job in New York City and moved to Wiscasset, Maine, to open a shop in the heart of Wiscasset Village.

(Fun fact: Craig and I came very close to moving to Wiscasset, but ended up in nearby Boothbay. We drove through and visited Wiscasset frequently.)

Alexander did it, he said, “in the pursuit of joy.” And his TikTok account was dedicated to “sharing and spreading joy.”

The universe was sending me a message.

In response, I wrote in my journal: I want 2026 to be about the pursuit of joy.

Until I realized it wasn’t about pursuit. Rather, it was about realignment. Because I knew joy wasn’t “out there,” but rather, something internal.

However, from a social media perspective, it was going to start with “out there”—the small, external, seemingly superficial things, algorithm be damned.

Books.

Crochet.

Tarot and oracle card reading.

Shaun Cassidy.

Duran Duran.

A short, brisk walk.

Lasagna soup.

Community.

On Substack Notes: an ongoing series.

Yet on a deeper level, realignment with joy wasn’t going to necessarily be about “happy things.” Nor was it going to be a “Serenity Now” remedy to the shitshow around me. As I write this, I’m getting over a sinus thing, which caused me to cancel travel plans to attend my nephew’s wedding. Additionally, a dear friend (I’m blessed to have several friends whom I refer to as “dear”) has courageously surrendered her five-year battle with cancer and entered hospice.

And the world is still worlding.

But in spite of the sadness, I’m giving thanks for the view of the pond from my apartment.

I’m taking comfort in the glow from my Christmas tree these final nights before it comes down.

I’m writing.

The other day, someone posted this verse by Walt Whitman on Substack Notes:

If you want to know

where your heart is,

look to where your mind

goes when it wanders

Put another way, it’s about following the light.

And no doubt the light within will illuminate the path “out there,” and the wider brushstrokes of love and livelihood will become more clearly defined and detailed.

What’s next

I began this Substack series in September 2024 on the heels of marital separation and the death of my sweet Spatzy. I had multiple purposes: to use writing as therapy; to connect with my fellow Duranies and GenXers; and, I confess, to market my way back into authorhood.

I thought that within six months, I’d be flourishing again.

I was naïve to think it would be that simple. I didn’t realize how much trauma was inhibiting me.

And yet, Dancing When the Bomb Drops has been therapeutic, to a degree. For me and, based on your public and private comments, for you, too.

Its core themes—marriage, midlife, and Duran Duran—remain present. But in terms of where my mind is wandering, a new theme will take center stage this year:

More joy.

It may spin off into a series of its own. Or it may be the next incarnation of “dancing.” Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to following this light and, inspired by Alexander in Wiscasset, to sharing and spreading it.

Not as a resolution. Not even as a recovery. As a realignment.

So that, at the end of 2026, regardless of the state of the world, if someone asks, “Do you know anyone who’s genuinely happy?” I can reply, “Yeah. Me.”