This week’s text:
✍️ “Joy” by Zadie Smith (New York Review of Books)

This week's guest:
Jordan Maney is the Radical Joy Coach™ helping Black, brown, and queer folks recover their softness, reclaim their joy, and rest without guilt. She’s a writer, speaker, and coach whose work centers joy as a liberatory, ancestral practice. Jordan’s presence is sunshine—you’ll see what we mean.

Find Jordan:
🌐 radicaljoycoach.com
📷 @radicaljoycoach on Instagram

Discussed in this episode:

• Why Zadie Smith’s essay is “close but no cigar”
• The bittersweet intersection of joy and grief
• Is joy a struggle, a surrender, or a risk?
• What ecstasy (the drug and the feeling) says about manufactured joy
• The difference between pleasure, contentment, happiness, and JOY
• Black Southern church traditions as containers for joy
• The power of presence, noticing, and choosing joy in dark times
• Why resisting despair is a revolutionary act of self-love
• Concerts, croissants, and the art of letting yourself become joy

Resources mentioned:

• “Beloved” by Toni Morrison
• “White Teeth” by Zadie Smith
• Risk It For a Biscuit™ (yes, we’re putting that on a T-shirt)

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