People talk about getting your spark back like there’s a before-and-after moment.

Like one day you’re exhausted and disconnected from yourself, and then you buy a cute workout set, drink more water, change your hair and emerge three weeks later as Her™.

I wish.

My spark came back much more slowly than that.

And honestly?

For a while, I wasn’t even looking for it.

I was just trying to keep going.

There was a version of me who was surviving really well.

I went through a difficult divorce.

I became a single mom.

And for more than five years, I learned how to build a life where I didn’t need anyone to rescue me.

At the same time, my career kept growing.

I took on more responsibility.

Bigger roles.

Harder problems.

Eventually, I rose to the executive level.

From the outside, there was plenty of evidence that I was thriving.

And in many ways, I was.

I was building a life I was proud of.

But there’s something I’ve learned about high-functioning survival:

You can be doing incredibly well and still be exhausted from being the person who always does incredibly well.

I didn’t want the world to know when things were hard.

So I kept going.

I worked.

I parented.

I handled things.

I became fiercely independent.

And somewhere in that season, I started creating content on social media.

At first, it was simply a creative outlet.

Something that belonged to me.

Not my career.

Not motherhood.

Not the hard parts of my life.

Mine.

And I don’t think I realized at the time how much I needed that.

Finding myself wasn’t one big transformation.

It happened in tiny choices.

I started caring for my body differently.

I learned which products actually made me feel good.

I moved because movement made me feel better, not because I was trying to punish myself into becoming someone else.

I paid attention to my energy.

I started noticing which commitments left me feeling alive and which ones left me resentful.

I learned to say no.

That one was big.

Because when you’re used to proving that you can handle everything, saying no can feel like admitting you can’t.

Eventually I realized:

I wasn’t saying no because I couldn’t handle something.

I was saying no because I didn’t want everything to have equal access to my life.

Then I started asking a different question.

For a long time, I asked:

What should I be doing?

What should a successful woman do?

What should a good mom do?

What should someone at my level in my career do?

What should my house look like?

How often should I work out?

What should I say yes to?

Eventually, I started asking:

What actually matters to me?

That’s where Chasing Joy really began.

Not with pretending life is joyful all the time.

Not with ignoring hard things.

And definitely not with creating some aesthetically perfect life where I’m drinking green juice at sunrise while my immaculate child quietly completes a gratitude journal.

Please.

Chasing joy became about making choices that create more room for the life I actually want to be present for.

My spark wasn’t gone.

I think she was buried.

Under responsibility.

Under proving myself.

Under survival.

Under being needed.

Under accomplishment.

Under a very long list of things that all seemed equally important.

And slowly, I started removing some of them.

I stopped treating rest like something I had to earn.

I started protecting my energy.

I learned that boundaries aren’t mean.

I learned that someone being disappointed by my no doesn’t automatically make my no wrong.

I learned that accepting help doesn’t erase my independence.

I learned that I can be ambitious without sacrificing myself to my ambition.

I learned that joy doesn’t always arrive as a huge, life-changing moment.

Sometimes it’s looking up from the chaos and realizing:

Holy shit. I actually really like this life.

This wasn’t a glow-up.

I’m still tired sometimes.

My house gets messy.

I lose my patience.

I take on too much and then wonder why I’ve taken on too much.

I have days when I’m great at boundaries and days when I apparently forget everything I’ve ever learned.

Growth is inconveniently non-linear.

But I’m different now.

Not because I’ve perfected myself.

Because I trust myself more.

I know what matters to me.

I know what I’m willing to work incredibly hard for.

And I’m getting much better at recognizing the things that simply aren’t worth the cost.

Getting your spark back isn’t about becoming who you used to be.

This might be my favorite part.

I don’t want the old me back.

I’m grateful for her.

But I’ve lived too much life to go backward.

I don’t want to recreate the woman I was before hard things happened.

I want to become the woman those experiences taught me I could be.

Strong without needing to prove it constantly.

Ambitious without being consumed by achievement.

Independent without refusing connection.

A present mom without expecting perfection from myself.

A woman who can build a big life and still actually live inside of it.

That’s the spark I’m chasing.

And maybe that’s what getting yours back looks like too.

Not becoming shinier.

Not becoming more productive.

Not becoming better at doing everything.

Maybe it’s simply peeling away enough of the things that aren’t yours anymore that you can finally recognize yourself again.

That’s why I created Chasing Joy.

This space isn’t about having a perfect life.

It’s about getting intentional about the one we already have.

It’s about values, boundaries, health, motherhood, work, messy kitchens, accepting help, laughing at the chaos and deciding that success should actually feel good once in a while.

If you’ve been so busy building, achieving, helping, carrying and doing that you’re not entirely sure where you went in the process:

You’re in the right place.

And if you don’t know where to start, start with my free Daily Values Reset.

Because sometimes getting your spark back starts much smaller than we think.

It starts by deciding what deserves you today.