A key to unlocking defiant joy

And how your support fuels my fire

Dear ones,

On the last day of 2024, I wrote about life in the cave of depression. And then I went, reluctantly, to dinner with friends.

“How are you?” they asked as I sat down at the table. I shrugged, my face saying more than I wanted to verbalize. By the time dinner was finished, I could feel myself beginning to thaw, the smiling feeling more genuine and less perfunctory.

We walked to a cafe nearby, where we’d decided to finish the night with dancing. Only one out of the four of us were really in the mood to dance, but as soon as the DJ started mixing, we were up, moving somewhat shyly to the music. I looked across the room at the two other people in the room who were dancing, eyes closed, bodies free and joyful, and I began to surrender.

Soon we were shimmying, shaking, improvising goofy synchronized movements, arms and hips swaying. Two hours of nonstop dancing later, it felt like I had started a fire with my body. What began as a little blinking spark turned into a warm crackling flame, fanned by this surrender of my body to joy. Fed by a room full of other bodies, surrendered to joyful movement.

I wasn’t sure I could make it until midnight, my knees aching and body slick with sweat, but at 11:30 pm, my friends and I scanned the room and nodded at each other. We’re staying.

I was afraid I’d enter 2025 the way I once slid off an icy road while driving and careened over the rail and down a hill, bracing for impact with a tree. Instead, as we neared the countdown, I looked at the rag tag community around me — many also queer and trans — and danced harder, leaning into the aches and exhaustion and sweat, but also the joy.

Dancing into a new year, wrapped in a plant

And this is how I greeted the new year, with defiant joy.

My friends and I kissed each other’s cheeks and shared sweaty embraces. I soaked up the collective hope in the room, thanking previous strangers for inspiring me to keep dancing.

Taking this out into the world.

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One thing I’ve learned about myself over the past few years is that dancing is one of my barometers, a reading of my mental health. The better my mental health, the more dancing I’m doing. When I moved to a new city two years ago, I enrolled in a dance class. I went dancing at a queer bar. I showed up weekly to swing dance. I put music on in my bedroom and slid around on the hardwood floor, choreographing my own routines. I felt more alive than perhaps I ever had.

Slowly, that has fizzled out. No living room or kitchen dance parties. No swing dancing. No classes. No queer bar. I can barely get myself outside for a walk on the weekends. I could see this happening in my periphery, but it wasn’t until new year’s eve on the dance floor that I saw it blinking at me in neon lights.

If joy has often felt out of reach this past year, as if on the other side of a locked door, then moving my body with creative intention is one key I possess to open that door.

Defiantly joyful dance, shared in community, swings the door wide open.

Conclusion: how can I create more space for dance to unlock defiant joy this year?

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Here’s another true thing: my mental health (and yours, too) can’t be measured by only one factor. I know this. A lack of dance is not the reason I’ve been in a cave of depression, but it is one of my signals to show where I am and guide me forward.

Like anyone else who lives with depression, anxiety, still-healing trauma, hormonal dysregulation, burnout and existential dread, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to self-tending and the support needed to cope, as well as to heal.

I spend my working days as a companion caregiver for older adults, most of whom live with memory disorders or other brain illnesses. It’s a privilege to accompany people in this phase of their journeys, and like many such jobs, it’s also grossly underpaid, emotionally taxing and unstable work. It is work that dims my light more than it fans my inner fire, even though I’m good at it. By the end of the day, I have little leftover. In order to keep functioning at this job, I have had to pretend I’m not unwell.

One of my clients and I recently went to a Nia dance class together. I was likely the one nonbinary trans person in a room full of women who were mostly twenty or more years older than me, and as we danced, I felt that fire again.

I felt, period.

And I ached for more of this in my life. I felt how I need this. I need this to be alive right now.

The only way to do that is for me to work a few less hours a week. To come to a dance class one morning each week and tend this fire.

I’m not sure yet if I can swing this financially. But the fire inside is telling me I have to try.

This is where I invite you in.

Over the past month, I have been blown away by a few unexpected strangers who signed up as paid subscribers to my Substack. As of now, I offer no incentives, no additional benefits, to having a paid subscription. They are simply supporting me as a writer, seeing value in my offering.

I know what a gift that is. I know how much I wish I had the means to support all the writers I love, whose voices I believe in on Substack. How honored I feel when someone chooses mine as one of their investments, because I understand how this can be a sacrifice. I never saw this coming.

And I want to be clear, that free or paid, anyone who supports the words I put out into the world and finds something of value in them is priceless to me. Your presence is priceless to me.

But for those who have the means and desire to upgrade to a monthly paid subscription, I also want you to know, that you are not only supporting my words — you are investing in my mental health. You might be part of the equation that makes it possible for me to create this space for dance in my life, to fuel the fire, to open the door to joy, to tend my mental health, to help me keep going in a job that is difficult until I know my next step.

And that is no small thing.

Do you realize how your seemingly small gestures of kindness might be tossing fuel onto the fire of some cave dweller?

I hope for the day I can pay that kindness forward. That will also be a key to unlocking more joy.

So thank you, from the depth of the cave and the depth of my heart. Your support matters. You matter.

Love,

Phoenix