Joy as Resistance: Cultivating Personal and Collective Well-Being in Challenging Times

By Christina Song, LMFT-S

To live joyfully in a world that often feels bent on breaking us is an act of fierce resistance. Joy is not a fragile feeling reserved for moments of ease—it is a radical declaration that our spirits will not be extinguished by the weight of oppression, injustice, or heartbreak. As queer activist and writer Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha says, “Our joy is our weapon. Our joy is our revolution.” This joy, deeply intertwined with resilience and hope, holds the power to sustain both personal healing and collective transformation.

From a psychological perspective, joy nourishes what researchers call “relational resilience”—the capacity to recover and thrive through connection with others (Masten & Powell, 2003). But this is not an individual journey; joy rooted in isolation can feel hollow. Instead, we find fullness when joy blooms in community, in mutual aid networks, in shared rituals, and collective care practices that stretch back through generations. It is the laughter echoing in kitchens where neighbors cook together, the shared stories circling around bonfires, the hands joined in protest and celebration alike.

When we nurture joy together, we challenge systems designed to divide us. Capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy profit from our despair and isolation. By choosing joy—by dancing, singing, creating, and celebrating—we reclaim our bodies and spirits from those forces that seek to commodify and suppress them. Joy becomes a refusal, a way of saying, “We are here, whole and unbroken.” It’s no accident that many liberation movements have centered joy as both a balm and a banner, recognizing that survival alone is not enough; we must also thrive.

Cultivating joy in challenging times means tending to the roots of well-being within collective spaces. It is found in the rituals of care we build with chosen families, the art we create to express our full humanity, the community gardens that feed both body and soul. These micro-movements of joy—small celebrations, mutual care exchanges, moments of shared gratitude—are seeds that can blossom into powerful forces for change.

As we tend to our own joy, we also nourish the collective soil from which justice grows. Joy fuels hope, creativity, and courage, sustaining us through long struggles and inspiring new visions of what is possible. In this way, joy is never separate from resistance—it is resistance.

So, lean into joy as your anchor and your armor. Share it generously, create spaces for it, and let it ripple through your communities. Because as Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha reminds us, “In joy, we find the strength to dream, to fight, to heal, and to build anew.” In the face of everything, may your joy be fierce, contagious, and unapologetically alive.

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References:

• Masten, A. S., & Powell, J. L. (2003). A resilience framework for research, policy, and practice. Resilience and vulnerability: Adaptation in the context of childhood adversities, 1-25.

• Piepzna-Samarasinha, L. L. (2018). Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice. Arsenal Pulp Press.

• hooks, b. (2000). All About Love: New Visions. Harper Perennial.