About Joy

My dad named me Joy.

My dad named me Joy

At my birth, my dad said: “Let’s call this one Joy.”

And yet, for most of my life, I was Joyce.

I don't think anyone consciously decided that. It just happened.

Joyce went to graduate school. She built a meaningful career.

She spent twenty-one years with Michigan State University Extension.

She taught, organized, traveled, learned, accomplished, and created a life filled with people and experiences she loved.

And it was a good life.

But underneath it all, I was also a seeker.

But underneath it all, I was also a seeker.

I was endlessly curious about life, about who we are, why we're here, and what allows us to experience more peace, freedom, and aliveness. Like so many of us, I often assumed there was something more I needed to learn, understand, achieve, or become.

So I kept searching.

Another book. Another training. Another experience. Another possibility.

I didn't know then that what I was searching for wasn't somewhere out there waiting to be found.

And I certainly didn't know that one day, becoming Joy would come to mean so much more than simply changing my name.

I was very good at searching.

It took me a long time to notice that looking might have been the thing getting in the way.

Then I got into a van that I later named, "JoyRide"

I didn’t have much of a plan.

That was rather the point.

Again and again, I watched life unfold without overthinking it or planning it. It was as if life was living me.

Unexpected invitations appeared. People showed up. Plans changed. Things worked and things didn’t.

Somewhere along the way, something else quietly shifted.

I realized I didn't have to leave Joyce behind or become someone new. She was part of me, part of the life that had brought me here.

But I could simply be Joy.

There was no great decision or analysis. The name just felt right, as though I were stepping more fully into who I had always been.

And the beautiful thing was, nothing new had to be added.

I wasn't becoming someone else.

I was becoming more myself.

That became a much bigger question.

What else had I been searching for that might already be here?

Peace

Clarity

Wisdom

Wellbeing

Trust

For years I had assumed these were states we created through techniques, and continuous learning.

The understanding known as the Three Principles turned that assumption upside down for me.

It pointed toward something much simpler:

Our natural default setting is of innate health and wisdom. It's what I call our divine design.

Nothing needs to change for us to see something different.

Our innate health and wisdom has always been within us, the only thing that gets in our way is our thinking.

We obscure it. We rediscover it. We forget it. We remember it.

We don't have to look outside of ourselves. It's about looking within.

That was life changing!

What I actually do

I listen.

That may sound almost too simple.

It isn’t.

When someone comes to me with a problem, I’m interested in the problem—but
I’m even more interested in what they may not yet be seeing about their experience of it.

I listen for their wisdom underneath the noise.

I ask questions.

I point things out.

And sometimes, in the middle of an ordinary conversation, a person sees something she cannot unsee.

I thought I had to fix that.

I thought that feeling meant something was wrong.

I thought I couldn’t be okay until this changed.

And suddenly there is space where
there wasn’t space before.

That is the work.

The road that brought me here

I came to this understanding through years of exploration, study and work with people.

I have a master’s degree in education and spent twenty-one years at Michigan State University Extension. I’ve studied the Three Principles for twenty years, including learning from Dicken Bettinger and others in this field.

Earlier in my life, I also trained and practiced in Eden Energy Medicine.

I no longer offer that work here, but it taught me something I carried forward: how much becomes visible when you stop rushing to fix someone and pay very close attention instead.

There is more to life than meets the eye.

I've always been curious about how life works—not only what we can understand, but also what we can't always explain.

Over the years, I've become fascinated by our innate design: the remarkable way our minds work, the wisdom that becomes available when our thinking quiets, and the natural well-being and resilience already within us.

And then there's the mystery.

The synchronicities. The unexpected connections. The moments of knowing. The times when life unfolds with an ease and timing I could never have orchestrated myself.

I don't feel the need to explain all of it anymore.

I've simply become more willing to notice it, trust it, and leave room for the possibility that we are part of something far greater than we realize.

That sense of curiosity and wonder is at the heart of both how I live and how I work with others.

If something in you is curious too, I think we'll have plenty to talk about.