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Feeling spun out by the headlines and the heat online? We name the collective dysregulation many of us are sensing and offer a humane path back to steadiness: grief literacy, nervous system care, and joyful integrity that doesn’t require disengaging from what matters. I share why doomscrolling is a trauma response, how the body interprets constant input as threat, and what conscious, bounded engagement looks like when staying informed starts to cost your aliveness.

Together, we unpack a practical compass for hard times: think globally, act locally, regulate personally. That means honoring limits, then turning attention to small, consistent acts of care in your neighborhood—checking on an elder after a storm, sharing groceries, making eye contact, or supporting a local pantry. We also challenge binary thinking and dehumanization, choosing to see the person across from us while refusing to use hatred as a coping strategy. Joyful presence becomes a form of resistance, a way to stay human without collapsing into apathy or burning out.

You’ll also get tactile tools to metabolize grief and release charge safely: submerged screams in a bath, rage rooms, angry walks in the woods, long exhales that reset the vagus nerve, cold-water resets, and a simple news boundary ritual followed by a hand-wash to signal completion. We close with a joy ledger practice and focused journaling prompts to clarify what’s truly in your control—your attention, your relationships, and your care for vulnerable people nearby. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs steadiness today, and leave a quick review so more listeners can find a humane way back to joy.

Journaling Prompts

• “What am I actually grieving beneath my political feelings?”
• “Where has my nervous system been asking for rest?”
• “What does joyful integrity look like for me right now?”
• “What is one small place I can show up locally this week?”
• “What happens in my body when I step away from the noise?”

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Buy your copy of Elena's book "Grieve Outside the Box"
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We unpack the lie that joy is a feeling you earn and reclaim it as a daily practice that builds resilience. We explore how joy coexists with grief, why breakthroughs without integration burn us out, and how small rituals train the nervous system to return to center.

• dismantling myths of joy as reward, feeling, or circumstance
• the spiral nature of healing and identity
• practicing joy before the result through repetition
• consistency over motivation and gentle returns
• joy and grief coexisting without canceling each other
• ordinary rituals that regulate the nervous system
• three core truths to carry through the week
• journaling prompts for practical integration
• noticing returns, softening, and steadiness

Three Elena Truths: Pick one to carry you through the week

1. Joy is not a mood. It’s a practice.
2. Resilience isn’t pushing through. It’s returning to yourself.
3. You don’t wait for the life you want—you practice it in small, livable ways.

Journaling Prompts:

• Where am I waiting for joy instead of practicing it?
• What is one small way I already know how to return to myself?
• If joy were a practice, not a feeling, what would it look like this week?
• What feels kind and doable right now?

Once a month I send out the Calliope’s Quill newsletter with journaling prompts and notes, sign up at www.elenabox.com

Support the show

Buy your copy of Elena's book "Grieve Outside the Box"
Follow on IG @elenabox

Send us a text

We explore resilience as the act of returning to self when triggers, change, and grief surface, using a candid story from our multigenerational home and practical tools to recenter. Joy and grief travel together; small embodied steps create space, clarity, and repair.

• taking the result as the path as a daily practice
• balancing motherhood and work while rejecting perfection
• multi-generational home dynamics and compassionate repair
• naming the wobble without dramatizing it
• grief, death cleaning, and the emotional labor of objects
• letting go as love, not erasure
• somatic resets that bring you back to shore
• journaling prompts to turn insight into action
• joy and grief as companions, not opposites
• resilience as devotion to your life

Practices / Journaling Prompts

• What am I ready to release right now?
• What feels heavy that doesn’t need to be carried?
• Where can I create more space — physically or emotionally?
• What helps me return to myself when I’m triggered?

If this has been beneficial for you, reach out let me know how this landed for you let me know what tools really resonated with you and also if there’s anything that you’re like actually "I felt like that was a crock a BS" -- let me know!

www.elenabox.com

It would mean so much if you could drop us a review maybe throw us a couple of stars if there are five of them even better!

Support the show

Buy your copy of Elena's book "Grieve Outside the Box"
Follow on IG @elenabox