Our new series of Embracing Change is a deep examination of all the different ways change shows up in our lives and all the ways we can respond to it. As Jen says in this interview, our guest today went through a “chosen change.” Hers was a transformation that felt inevitable after all the small, incremental posture changes made her ready for the leap to follow — a leap toward more sanity, more love, and more joy. 

Joy Sullivan is a poet and community builder. Her new book “Instructions for Traveling West” is “for anyone flinging themselves into fresh starts.” She received a Masters in poetry from Miami University and has served as the poet-in-residence for the Wexner Center for the Arts. She joins the podcast today sharing her story of walking into the unknown. Through her unique viewpoint as a poet, she unlocks potent ways for us to trust our intuition and stay curious about what is scaring us.

Jen and Joy touch on:

• The importance of embracing loneliness and stillness as opportunities for self-discovery and hearing one's true inner voice and callings.


• stories from Joy’s life that served as lessons for her to love herself more deeply


• Reclaiming selfhood by rupturing constrictive cultural and religious narratives, especially around womanhood and female identity

For anyone feeling the tug to upend the inertia of their life and lean into evolution, this conversation is an inspiring guide for following one's deepest callings into new horizons.

* * *

Thought-Provoking Quotes:

"I started driving west and I spent six weeks hiking in Sedona, being in the beautiful desert. During that time, I really had this sense of awakening and the sense of rupturing. It was that question like, ‘Am I doing work that matters?’ And I was so awake to my life again in that intense way that loneliness just pricks us alive. And I really began to grapple. I just looked at every aspect of my life and said, ‘Could there be more?’" - Joy Sullivan

“I don't think it matters where you go, but to be able to give yourself an opportunity to really reinvent, that's the good stuff.” - Joy Sullivan

"I didn't have the life that I sort of felt like I always should have had based on what a woman was supposed to get — a husband, kids, the stability of the white picket fence, etc. And what's been interesting is when I sort of recreated or fractured some of those stories culturally and religiously that I had been given, my life just expanded into possibility because it had never occurred to me that a woman could be really, really happy if she didn't choose those things." - Joy Sullivan

“Poetry is the only place that can hold the unsayable. It's the only space we have that holds that which cannot be spoken in any other art form. All the ache, all the beauty, all the impossibility of being alive; that's what poems are for.” - Joy Sullivan

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

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 by Joy Sullivan (A book of poems coming April 9, 2024) - https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/734503/instructions-for-traveling-west-by-joy-sullivan/

Guest’s Links:

Joy’s Website - https://joysullivanpoet.com/

Joy’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/Joy_E_Sullivan

Joy’s Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/joysullivanpoet/

Connect with Jen!

Jen’s Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/

Jen’s Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmaker

Jen’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/jenHatmaker/

Jen’s Facebook - https://facebook.com/jenhatmaker

Jen’s YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/user/JenHatmaker?sub_confirmation=1

The For the Love Podcast is a production of Four Eyes Media, presented by Audacy. 

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