The Memoir: I Am Joy

We have all asked ourselves the infamous question of “who

am I, why am I here, what does it all mean? Well as we

hurl ourselves down this journey of life—it feels more like a free fall

off of a cliff at times—we will come to answer our ever-looming ques-

tion of just who we are over and over.

In that current moment, the answer to who we are is profoundly

essential. All those who am I’s become the person, woman,

mother, friend, wife, and career woman that stands before you in the

mirror today.

So many times, the answer of who am I made me shudder; it

brought deep shame and opened the floodgates for a self-loathing talk

that could marvel even the darkest minds. (I have mastered the art of

here is how you suck, let’s count the ways” thinking). I carried these

answers as scars—proof if you will—that I was a lost cause. No matter

how much I would accomplish, nothing washed away all the many 

reasons I firmly believed made me inherently flawed; it was this think-

ing that, sadly for decades of my life, forced me to answer the ques-

tion of “Who I am” with this answer: shattered.

I have come to love my I AM’s; they are my stripes, my badges,

my reminders that I never stop fighting, I never stop working, even

when I believed I would never be worthy of anything. There was a

dim, almost extinguished, light that burned deep in the essence of

who I was created to be; that ever-so-quiet-but-steady light kept me

pushing forward. Boy, am I thankful for that light, I can say now, as I

type these pages to an audience that I am amazed will exist one day.

That my little light is now a beacon, guiding not only me but all who

I encounter this amazing, sometimes gnarly, journey of life.