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We unpack the lie that joy is a feeling you earn and reclaim it as a daily practice that builds resilience. We explore how joy coexists with grief, why breakthroughs without integration burn us out, and how small rituals train the nervous system to return to center.

• dismantling myths of joy as reward, feeling, or circumstance
• the spiral nature of healing and identity
• practicing joy before the result through repetition
• consistency over motivation and gentle returns
• joy and grief coexisting without canceling each other
• ordinary rituals that regulate the nervous system
• three core truths to carry through the week
• journaling prompts for practical integration
• noticing returns, softening, and steadiness

Three Elena Truths: Pick one to carry you through the week

1. Joy is not a mood. It’s a practice.
2. Resilience isn’t pushing through. It’s returning to yourself.
3. You don’t wait for the life you want—you practice it in small, livable ways.

Journaling Prompts:

• Where am I waiting for joy instead of practicing it?
• What is one small way I already know how to return to myself?
• If joy were a practice, not a feeling, what would it look like this week?
• What feels kind and doable right now?

Once a month I send out the Calliope’s Quill newsletter with journaling prompts and notes, sign up at www.elenabox.com

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Buy your copy of Elena's book "Grieve Outside the Box"
Follow on IG @elenabox

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We explore resilience as the act of returning to self when triggers, change, and grief surface, using a candid story from our multigenerational home and practical tools to recenter. Joy and grief travel together; small embodied steps create space, clarity, and repair.

• taking the result as the path as a daily practice
• balancing motherhood and work while rejecting perfection
• multi-generational home dynamics and compassionate repair
• naming the wobble without dramatizing it
• grief, death cleaning, and the emotional labor of objects
• letting go as love, not erasure
• somatic resets that bring you back to shore
• journaling prompts to turn insight into action
• joy and grief as companions, not opposites
• resilience as devotion to your life

Practices / Journaling Prompts

• What am I ready to release right now?
• What feels heavy that doesn’t need to be carried?
• Where can I create more space — physically or emotionally?
• What helps me return to myself when I’m triggered?

If this has been beneficial for you, reach out let me know how this landed for you let me know what tools really resonated with you and also if there’s anything that you’re like actually "I felt like that was a crock a BS" -- let me know!

www.elenabox.com

It would mean so much if you could drop us a review maybe throw us a couple of stars if there are five of them even better!

Support the show

Buy your copy of Elena's book "Grieve Outside the Box"
Follow on IG @elenabox

Send us a text

What if the destination could walk beside you today? We dive into a living, breathing practice of becoming—one that honors grief, invites your future self into the room, and remembers what your inner child always knew. Set against winter’s slow rhythm and a tender anniversary of loss, we explore how to “take the result as the path,” a tantric insight that transforms identity work from a someday project into embodied, daily choices.

I share how early motherhood, creative ambitions, and the honest fatigue of life all meet this practice. We focus on orientation over overhaul: five mindful minutes in the morning, a mantra repeated on a walk, and tiny cues that change posture, breath, and presence. You’ll hear how descent work—supported by rituals like a home sauna for grief—prevents spiritual bypass and deepens resilience. Instead of pushing through, we cultivate meaning while staying with what is raw and real.

Along the way, we revisit inner child threads, future-self embodiment, and shamanic perspectives on elder wisdom already watching our path. You’ll get clear journaling prompts to surface the one aligned step for this week, plus language you can use when doubt gets loud. This is practical spirituality for people who want to become themselves on purpose: compassionate, grounded, and a little braver each day.

If this resonates, follow along, share with a friend who’s cocooning, and leave a review so more listeners can find their way to this work. Then tell me: what quality will you embody for the next 24 hours?

Journaling Prompts

• Who am I becoming in this season of my life?
• What qualities does that version of me embody?
• Where am I right now — honestly and tenderly?
• What is one small way I can take the result as the path this week?
• What is being asked to die so something truer can live?

Resources

WFDU 89.1 Public Radio

Imagine Meditation by Boreta and Ram Dass

The Journey of Soul Initiation: A Field Guide for Visionaries, Evolutionaries, and Revolutionaries by Bill Plotkin

Maria Cutronia, Master yoga teacher based in NYC/Brooklyn

The Creative Act by Rick Rubin

Support the show

Buy your copy of Elena's book "Grieve Outside the Box"
Follow on IG @elenabox