How do you know when you need more joy in your life?

I started writing, researching, and teaching about joy because—real talk—it became one of the biggest gaps in my life.

Now to be clear, I experience joy. With my family. My friends. Laughter over dinner, dance battles in the kitchen. But I wasn’t prioritizing joy. I wasn’t intentional about it. It just… happened when it happened.

That changed when I looked back at my own research.

I’ve spent my career studying the hardest parts of life—gun violence, grief, trauma, gangs, interpersonal harm. I built methods to define it, detect it, and reduce it.

But something felt off.

And it was Black Twitter—specifically my colleague and friend @DocDre at Georgia Tech—who helped me see what I was missing.

He reminded me (and all of us) that Black folks have always used joy as resistance. Offline. And now online.

That hit me.

Because while I was coding tweets for violent threats, what I was also seeing was… joy.

Youth posting funny memes, inside jokes, dances, clips that spark belly laughs and connection.

Using joy to interrupt violence. To be joy.

I started to ask:

Why wasn’t I studying that, too?

Why wasn’t I calling in joy with the same rigor I used to call out harm?

Turns out, our bodies know when joy is missing.

Tension in the jaw.

Restless legs.

Headaches that linger.

A short fuse.

A tired spirit.

Call it the social determinants of not having joy.

And the science backs it up: researchers have found that joy—what some call positive affect—is directly associated with better immune function, lower cortisol levels, and reduced risk for mental health challenges like depression and anxiety (Pressman & Cohen, 2005).

So here’s your gentle reminder:

You don’t have to wait for joy.

You can create it.

You can prioritize it.

You can be it.

Make joy a part of your survival strategy.

Make joy your daily practice.

✨ Your body—and your spirit—will thank you.