Welcome to the 'Joy Guide June' Substack

Sharing the seasons of my life, one spiral at a time.

JOY IRL: Capturing my boys taking a nap in the car outside the mall (cause life be exhausting)

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Some of you have been riding this joy train with me since the early days… through every pivot, platform hop, career change, and “What if we try this?” life experiment. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for always sticking around and for letting me be a chaotic work-in-progress in public. You’re the reason I haven’t quit the internet (yet).

And if you’re new here, you’re in great company. This is your official invitation to the Joy Guide June party! This invite is part love note, part backstory, and part “how the hell did we get here?”

Let’s begin…

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👋😄Hi, I’m June—new mom, Joy Guide, and former overachiever who realized pretending to be fine had become a full-time job… so I quit.

Also quit my job-job, but that’s a story for another day.

Astrologically my big 3 are: Aries Sun, Capricorn Moon, Virgo Rising, which basically means I’m equal parts fiery, focused, and forever editing my life. I’m also a 1/3 Sacral Generator in Human Design and, begrudgingly, an Enneagram 3. IYKYK.

If that sounded like gobbledygook, here’s the short version: I know the pressure to be perfect, productive, and constantly proving your worth. I’ve lived it. And almost let it take me down (think ER + pneumonia in my left lung).

Somewhere between the breakdowns, rock bottoms, dark nights of the soul, and spiritual awakenings I did not RSVP to, I realized I couldn’t hustle my way to happiness. So I stopped. Or at least, I started trying.

These days I live and work in seasons. That means I honor whatever phase of change I’m in (whether I’m unraveling, shedding, cocooning, reimagining, rebuilding, emerging, or expanding into what’s next). I create and share based on what’s real for me (not what I think the algorithm wants). Some seasons are about clarity. Others are about rest, grief, softness, or angrily starting over from scratch. And through it all, I’m committed to finding joy in real life, in real time.

This Substack is where I share what it actually looks like to go on an honest journey…because, frankly, I need accountability.

I also share what’s helping (and what’s totally not). I’ve tried a lot of tools, but the ones I keep coming back to are Human Design, astrology, somatics, and psychology. Not as one-size-fits-all solutions, but as fun maps. As mirrors. As reminders. Not every tool fits every season, but they help me make sense of things when life feels like a confusing hot mess.

And I think I needed these tools because I got so good at not telling the truth, especially to myself.

Before becoming a Joy Guide, I worked in the entertainment industry as a costume designer and wardrobe stylist, which basically made me a professional pretender. And despite retiring from that life years ago, I can still default to making things the most polished it can be.

I think back on that life and I still cringe a bit. Sure, my career looked “fun.” We played dress-up for a living. But behind the scenes? It was a pressure cooker of performance. A place where hierarchy mattered more than humanity, egos ran the show, and everyone was expected to smile through the dysfunction. I learned all the tricks: how to filter reality, mask exhaustion, and create illusions so convincing even I started to believe them. Like boobs. I can tape them so well, a saggy set of B’s could look like perky D’s in minutes!

Anyways, I digress.

For a long time, I thought it was just that industry. But the more I’ve listened to clients, friends, strangers, the more I’ve realized: this performance culture is EVERYWHERE. In corporate offices and classrooms. On social media and family dinner tables. We’ve been taught to smile through burnout, to chase external validation, and to shrink our truth just to keep the peace (AKA dishonest harmony). We’ve learned how to survive, but forgotten how to feel. By the end of my “successful” career, I couldn’t even locate my own joy😬.

And that’s why I do what I do now as a Joy Guide.

I don’t want to perform joy. I actually want to live it. And I want to help others do the same. To take off the mask. To untangle from the roles and rules that no longer fit. To rebel against these broken systems and remember that you don’t have to earn your way back to yourself.

You’re allowed to want more than survival. You’re allowed to want wholeness and fulfillment. To stop performing who you think you should be and reclaim who you already are. And joy can be the gateway drug in!

So if you’re into that kind of freedom, you’re in the right place.

Whatever season you’re in (lost, furious, starting over) just know: joy isn’t the end goal. It’s the rebellion. And if claiming it makes you a Joy Rebel…fantastic. The world needs more of us!

One brave, messy, joyful step at a time,

June