What Joy Cost Me (And Why I’d Pay It Again)

I have been thinking about what to write for this birthday. The milestone kind. The one where the number alone makes people stop and say something.

Fifty.

And I keep coming back to honesty. Not the highlight reel. Not the version that looks good framed on a wall. The real one. The one that has some rough edges and a few scars and a whole lot of grace woven in.
So here it is. What joy cost me. And why I would pay every single cent of it again.

What Joy Cost Me

Joy cost me everything I thought I needed in order to be happy.

I mean that exactly as I wrote it. The conditions. The circumstances being just right. Everyone around me being okay so that I could finally exhale. The idea that joy lived somewhere out there, in the approval, in the achievement, in the version of my life that looked correct from the outside.

Letting go of that story was the price of admission. And it was not cheap.

Joy is not the conditions. Joy is me, connected to the deepest aspects of myself. It is the silence that meets me after a long day. It is the moments when I come back to my breath, to my body, to the truth of who I actually am beneath all the performing and proving. It is the places, both physical and internal, where I choose myself first.

That simple sentence — I choose myself first — took me the better part of four decades to actually mean.

What I Had to Unlearn

Here is the honest list. The things I carried for years that I had to set down before joy had room to breathe.

I had to unlearn that my joy is tied to how others perceive me. That one ran deep. The need for approval, for others to respond a certain way before I allowed myself to feel good. I handed my sense of well-being to others for a long time, and it cost me more than I can measure.

I had to unlearn perfectionism. The pushing, the forcing, the relentless doing as though rest was a reward I had not yet earned.

I had to unlearn numbing. For me that meant alcohol, and eventually sugar, and eventually whatever was available when life felt like too much. Sobriety, when it came, was not really about a substance. It was about the courage to feel. All of it. Even the parts I had spent years trying not to feel. And that courage (that willingness to stop reaching for something outside myself to manage what was happening inside myself) that became the foundation everything else was built on.

I had to unlearn that Joy meant comfort. This one surprised me. Because the things keeping me comfortable were also keeping me small. The familiar story. The safe route. The version of my life that other people understood. Comfort and joy are not the same thing, and I spent years confusing them.

I had to unlearn that love means disregarding yourself. That love means putting others first, always. That love is earned by how much you sacrifice, how much you manage, how much you make everyone else okay at the cost of yourself. I had to learn that love — real love, sustainable love, the kind that gives without depleting — starts inside.

I had to unlearn the limitations and beliefs about money and sacrifice. That you cannot have both joy and financial abundance. That one must cost the other. That wanting more means something is wrong with you.

And finally, the one that took the longest: I had to unlearn that I am too much. And realise that I am just right for the right people (myself first).

What Surprised Me

What surprised me is how much better it keeps getting.

The dreams I have co-created with my husband David are beyond my wildest expectations. Not in spite of doing this work, but because of it. Joy is currency. I mean that practically. The better I feel, the more aligned I am, the more abundance pours in. Not as magic. As a natural result of a woman who is no longer leaking her energy in a hundred directions.

What surprised me is how easy it can be when you stop fighting yourself.

What surprised me is that the girl who sat on the living room floor arguing with her dad about how important joy was, insisting that we should not sacrifice joy for money, is now speaking at finance conferences and working with corporate teams, building joy in as a leadership strategy. She was right all along and now she feels connected to her Dad in spirit.

What surprised me is the healing. The community. The most beautiful gathering of courageous, compassionate joy warriors who are also just as brave, just as imperfect, just as committed to showing up anyway. That I could be fully myself, in all my imperfection, and that would be exactly enough to create something this meaningful.

What I Would Tell Her

If I could sit down with the version of me who was twenty-five, disconnected, and performing okayness, here is what I would say.

You are going to forget yourself for a while. In the darkest moments, when you question not just your path but your life, know that it is going to be your greatest teacher. All of your pain will not only be powerful. It will be purposeful. You are going to use it to pave new pathways, and you are going to show others that their pain can be their purpose too.

Keep dreaming. You are going to build the most beautiful life filled with awe and what feels like magic.

You are going to meet and marry a man who is tender and sweet, who honours all of you and challenges you in the best ways.

You are going to have the puppy you always wanted. The teddy bear cuddler, the cutest and sweetest thing.

You are going to build the most authentic and genuine circle of friends who cheer you on and mention you in rooms you’re not in.

You are going to live in the country, just like you always wanted. Surrounded by trees and animals and the kindest people, at the edge of the river in a magical forest.

You are going to uncover the secret to joyful and abundant living and share it with thousands of people. You will write journals. You will build an Academy. You will certify others to carry this work into the world alongside you.

You will create so much peace around you that chaos will feel foreign.

You don’t know it yet, but you are actually a Joy Wizard.

Hang on tight. It is a wild and wondrous journey, with all of the ups and downs that are oh so worth it. Trust yourself. Keep honouring yourself, taking the next best steps, and making joy your priority.

On the hardest days, may you remember that everything is always working out for you.

And What About You?

I am not sharing this as a highlight reel. I am sharing it as an invitation.

Because I know you have a version of this story too. The things you have had to let go of. The beliefs you are still in the process of setting down. The version of yourself you have not quite made it back to yet.

Joy takes courage. It cost me a lot to find it, and I would pay every cent again. Because nothing on the other side of that reckoning has been ordinary.

If something in this landed for you, I would love for you to come sit with us in the Joy Nest. It is where we practise this together, every single month. No fixing. No rescuing. Just a community of people reminding each other of who they already are.

Xj Jillian