[ENCORE] Joy Sullivan: Choosing Change and Finding Your True North

2025-11-14

Description: We’re revisiting one of our most-loved conversations from this show—an exploration of how transformation takes shape in our lives and how we can bravely meet it, even when it’s terrifying. In this encore episode, we look back on Jen’s conversation with poet and community-builder Joy Sullivan, whose own “chosen change” became a leap toward more sanity, more love, and more joy. After years of living according to scripts written by others, Joy found herself standing at a crossroads, feeling the pull of something deeper and more true. What ...

Description:

We’re revisiting one of our most-loved conversations from this show—an exploration of how transformation takes shape in our lives and how we can bravely meet it, even when it’s terrifying.

In this encore episode, we look back on Jen’s conversation with poet and community-builder Joy Sullivan, whose own “chosen change” became a leap toward more sanity, more love, and more joy.

After years of living according to scripts written by others, Joy found herself standing at a crossroads, feeling the pull of something deeper and more true. What followed was a radical leap into the unknown—a move that reshaped her life, her faith, and her art, including her book ‘Instructions for Traveling West’ – a collection for anyone flinging themselves into their own fresh starts.

Together, she and Jen talk about the “incremental scoots” we make before the big leap, the beauty and ache of reinvention, and how stillness can become a sacred space for clarity. Joy shares her story of walking into the unknown and learning to trust her intuition along the way.

In this episode, we reflect on:

The difference between a change that happens to us and one we choose
Embracing loneliness and stillness as paths to self-discovery
Lessons that taught Joy to love herself more deeply
Why poetry gives language to what we cannot say aloud

If you’re feeling the pull toward something new but uncertain, this encore offers a gentle reminder that change—though often uncomfortable—is where our truest selves begin to emerge.

Thought-provoking Quotes:

"If the birds know how to migrate, if bears know when to hibernate, if nature knows when to move forward, it doesn't make any sense for us to not know that also." – Joy Sullivan
"It's so important to listen and to follow the rhythms that we're pulled to even if we don't know what we're leaping towards." – Amy Hardin
“First you must realize you're homesick for all the lives you're not living. Then you must commit to the road and the rising loneliness.” – Joy Sullivan
“You have to be careful what you write down—it performs this kind of beautiful, terrifying magic.” – Joy Sullivan
“Don’t compare yourself to someone who’s mid-leap. There were probably a lot of scoots to the edge before they launched.” – Joy Sullivan
“You don’t have to get the leap right every time. You just have to be willing to innovate midair.” – Joy Sullivan
“I had coded into my psyche what it meant to be a good woman. When I fractured those stories, my life expanded into possibility.” – Joy Sullivan
“If I take crumbs and call it a meal, if I stay in rooms where I’m not called beloved, then I’m in a cage of my own making.” – Joy Sullivan

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

Flinging Ourselves Into Fresh Starts ft. Joy Sullivan – https://jenhatmaker.com/podcasts/series-61/flinging-ourselves-into-fresh-starts-ft-joy-sullivan/
Sustenance ((A Community of Poets and Writers founded by Joy Sullivan) - https://joysullivanpoet.com/sustenance
Necessary Salt (Joy Sullivan’s Substack Blog) - https://joysullivan.substack.com/
Instructions For Traveling West: Poems by Joy Sullivan - https://amzn.to/4qZTZ7l