On Origin Stories and Becoming
Welcome to the Rebel Joy Society
For as long as I can remember, I have been quietly obsessed with the idea of becoming.
I didn’t have the language for it until recently, and in many ways I’m still unpacking it. But the feeling has always been there — this sense that who I was becoming mattered far more than where I currently was.
I grew up in a very small town. Seventy-two acres, horses, chickens, pigs. And I hated it, viscerally, in the way only a dreamy, restless child can hate something ordinary.
I can still feel myself lying on my bed wondering how this was the life I was born into.
I dreamt of cities. Of a nomadic existence. I would indulge in a fantasy where I had been adopted and my real parents were off jet-setting somewhere and simply couldn’t be bothered by the responsibility of a child. For the record, I admired their (fictional) choice and didn’t indulge in any self-pity. It somehow soothed me to imagine I had come from a lineage of adventurers and seekers.
What I had instead of adventure was interiority. A rich, sprawling, endlessly interesting inner world that I retreated into as often as possible. I wrote about it in my journal once: “My world is painted in soft yellows and dreamy shades of greys and blues. I live inside my head as often as I can — it’s such a lovely place to be.”
I turned daydreaming into an intentional practice.
An artform, even.
As a child I felt ‘other’. It wasn’t in an I don’t belong sort of way, but a touch of outside-looking-in. Even that language and the emotion it arouses isn’t quite right. I was never made to feel like an outsider. My childhood was perfectly average in all the best ways. But I was an observer. Always watching. Always cataloging. Always writing stories in my head about who I would be and how I would show up in the world (laser focused on becoming). I observed other people’s behaviors like a buffet — internalizing the flavors I resonated with, steering clear of the ones I didn’t. I could witness a petty argument between friends and immediately clock how both of them were right. Choosing sides was genuinely impossible for me because I could FEEL the reality of both perspectives simultaneously. Bone-deep empathy on one side, genuine puzzlement at their inability to see outside themselves on the other.
The moment someone called me an old soul, something clicked into place.
I now think most of us are old souls.
The remembering is just stronger in some.
My grandmother had a gorgeous curio cabinet she used as a bookshelf. Dante. Shakespeare. Epictetus. Robert Frost. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Lewis Carroll. All behind glass, like sacred treasures. I was completely enamored. All these lives lived, distilled into ink-stained faded pages. These were my people. I had finally found some kindred souls. I started writing poetry around eleven. I was reading Plato and Anaïs Nin not long after.
In my late teens, I stumbled across Joseph Campbell. One line in particular stopped me completely:
“Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.”
Something in me recognized those words as gospel truth. I have never really looked back.
Joy, as it turns out, is also my middle name.
And my mother — long before I had a framework for any of this — used to call me her joy-child. Not as a statement. As an address. The way you’d use a full name. “Well hello, Joy-child.” I’ve spent a lot of time sitting with how that shaped my identity and how I perceived myself.
Words, I’ve come to believe, are not descriptions of reality. They are instructions to it. Language isn’t passive — it’s participatory. And being addressed, from your very earliest memories, as someone whose nature is joy? That lands somewhere deep. It becomes something you grow into. Something you feel quietly responsible for embodying.
I wasn’t a particularly joyful child, to be clear. I was the full spectrum — stubborn, curious, sullen, determined, rebellious, creative — on a loop, like most children. I didn’t truly identify as joy-filled until I was nearing twenty, when I was old enough to understand that joy isn’t a feeling that happens to you. It’s a choice you make. Repeatedly. Even when — especially when — circumstances aren’t cooperating.
Three decades on and I am still completely, unreservedly in love with life. Unimpressed by society’s version of it, absolutely. But navigating contentedly on the outskirts, still painting my world in hues of yellow, blue and grey.
So what IS The Rebel Joy Society, and why does any of this matter?
This is a space for women (and maybe some introspective fellas) who are awake enough to notice something is missing — and honest enough to stop pretending otherwise. Those who have followed the conventional path and found the pay-off quietly, persistently absent. Folks who are spiritually curious but find that organized religion doesn’t quite fit. Kindred souls who lie awake at 2am wondering if the rat race is really all there is.
You’re not broken. You’re not ungrateful. You’re just restless in that particular way that deserves to be taken seriously rather than medicated or managed away.
I’m not going to fix you. I want to be very upfront about that. I can’t hand you a five-step system for a meaningful life or wave a magic wand and install a blueprint for purpose. What I CAN do is create a space where your questions get to breathe. Where curiosity is more welcome than certainty. Where the examined life — the one Socrates literally died defending — becomes something we practice together, gently and without pressure.
This is a community fueled by contemplation. And you are so welcome here.
Every Tuesday, I’ll land in your inbox with something worth sitting with. Every Friday, something shorter in your Substack Notes — a thought, a provocation, a question to carry into your weekend.
If you’re brand new and want somewhere to begin, The Rebel Joy Starter Kit was made for exactly this moment.
Grab The Rebel Joy Starter Kit below → $11
Otherwise — find a comfortable seat. We’re just getting started.
With Joy (always)
— Aj