January

The category is: PUBLIC VULNERABILITY

We started the year by wrapping up our four-part Fall/Winter community writing workshop series, “Literary Therapy: Caregiving, Shame, Self-Love, and Recovery.”

The last two sessions in our our writerly feelingstravaganza, “Accountability, Supportive Rituals, and Self-Sabotage” and “Recovery, Self-Loathing, and Self-Love,” offered more space to explore and celebrate ourselves through introspective creative writing and group discussion. For the series, we produced four digital Literary Therapy Exploration Workbooks so attendees could write their way to clarity at their own pace. In total, over 500 people from over 20 countries joined us to reflect, write, connect, and work through spiritual ashiness during our Summer and Winter sessions.

Joy all over the world

Alex referenced his work with GetSomeJoy and its role in his recovery journey in an essay for Food & Wine, “Safe at Home,” which ran in the February 2022 issue alongside his Curry Chicken and Sweet Potato Galette recipe.

A healing circle

As part of the Twitter Spaces Spark Program, Alex continued his weekly GetSomeJoy Community Mental Health Check-Ins and Resource Exchanges on Twitter Spaces. While offering drop-in space for folks to vent, celebrate themselves, and engage support in 24 sessions, we shared delicious new recipes and added some new Joyhunters to the GetSomeJoy community.

March

Write your way through it.

One time, we developed a four-part Literary Therapy Writing Program for the Dominican Writers Association, “Literary Therapy: Joy, Grief, Healing, and Recovery.” There were snacks and tears and life-changing revelations. And recipes.

Literary Therapy Week 1: Joy, Boundaries, and Restorative Practices

Literary Therapy Week 2: Grief + Post-Traumatic Growth

Literary Therapy Week 3: Intergenerational Healing and New Narratives

Literary Therapy Week 4: Recovery + Self-Love

Literary Therapy by the Lake

Our Community Literary Therapy Wall moved from the Black Joy Parade’s Healing Village to the Lakeview Branch of the Oakland Public Library. People stopped by during March and April to reflect and share what joy means to them and how it looks, feels, smells, and tastes.

May

Literary Therapy for all

Enesha hosted a Literary Therapy Pop-Up at the LavaMaeX Pop Up Care Village that provided hot showers, employment aid, clothing, legal aid, food, haircuts, housing aid, massages, and more at Oakland City Hall. We invited community members to share about meals or dishes that represent joy and how joy feels, smells, sounds, and tastes. And we had the fried chicken stickers on deck.

A mobile Feelingstravaganza

Our Community Literary Therapy Wall moved from Oakland Public Library’s Lakeview Branch to the Elmhurst Branch, where it spent the rest of 2022. We stocked the display with Literary Therapy Exploration Workbooks, GetSomeJoy swag, and our beloved fried chicken stickers.

Visit our Community Literary Therapy Wall:

Oakland Public Library - Elmhurst Branch

1427 88th Ave, Oakland, CA 94621

Okay, but how’s your spirit, though?

And we hosted the first in a three-part Spiritual Wellness Series in collaboration with cultural worker, spiritualist, and coach Hakim Pitts. They created a dynamic, transformative, affirming experience that explored restorative spiritual practices through an African Diasporic, BlackQueerTrans + Disability Justice lens and offered space to find clarity, community, and relevant resources.

Hakim, a thoughtful and intuitive guide, let us know, “This is spiritual, but this ain’t church!” This meant it was a safe space for crying and cussin’ if the spirit moved you to do so while sharing. And cuss and cry we did.

We started a WhatsApp group for deeper connections and  supplemented each workshop with a communal debrief/check-in on Twitter Spaces for folks to unpack how things hit and exchange additional resources.

July

Imagine not dreading meetings

Want to incorporate some joy and community building into your meetings? In July 2022, we launched a Virtual Literary Therapy Board via Miro that facilitates collaboration, normalizes conversations around wellness, and gets people talking about joy.

Joy in unexpected places

Over on HopIn, Enesha shared 5 Ways to Inspire Joy and Connection at Your Next Event or Meeting using our Virtual Board.

Less Raggedy Workplaces 101

Because a miserable manager leads to miserable associates, we collaborated with the Greater NY Chamber of Commerce on a webinar, “Prioritizing Mental Health and Joy at Work” for entrepreneurs and corporate and community leaders.

Check it out here on Chamber TV.

September

Let’s talk about loss

What rituals, resources, and perspectives have helped you cope and find joy after experiencing loss? We invited Issa M. Mas, author of Grief Thoughts: Brief Anecdotes About Profound Loss, and Black In The Garden’s Colah B. Tawkin to our GetSomeJoy Twitter Space to share tools for thriving and insights on working towards being okay while rolling in the deep.

And over on Twitter, Alex started crowdsourcing grief and loss resources.

November

Because life is raggedy sometimes

After pulling together submissions from generous folks from across Janet Jackson’s Internet and making time for mourning, we published our first multimedia grief and loss resource, “griefKit: Crowdsourced tools and consideration for raggedy times.” It has articles, books, communities, podcasts, poetry, music, movement, recipes, and other considerations for using creativity and mindfulness to navigate the ups and downs of loss.

You can download the full digital tool or browse the griefKit by section here.