There is a quiet belief many working moms carry. Once everything is done, then I will relax. Once the deadlines are met, the house is clean, the kids are settled, and work slows down, then I will feel joy.
But what if joy is not something waiting for you on the other side of “done”?
In this episode of The CPA MOMS Podcast, Nicole sits down with Rachel Martin from Finding Joy to talk about what it really looks like to cultivate joy in the middle of real life. Not the polished version. Not the quiet, vacation version. The actual, noisy, busy, sometimes overwhelming version.
Rachel’s message is simple and powerful. Joy is not a reward. It is a practice.
Joy and Happiness Are Not Enemies
For years, Rachel worked hard to separate joy from happiness. Joy felt deeper and more grounded. Happiness felt fleeting, emotional, and maybe even something to delay until life felt easier.
Over time, her perspective shifted.
Joy, she explains, is a posture. It is choosing to look for something good even when life is not what you expected. It is gratitude in the middle of hard things. It is being thankful for a steady heartbeat on a monitor when your child is in the hospital. It is not denying reality. It is deciding to look for light within it.
Happiness, on the other hand, is the felt experience. The sun coming through the window. A great cup of coffee. A birthday celebration. A good run. That light, childlike energy.
Here is what is surprising. Both take discipline.
It takes discipline to look for joy when you are exhausted or discouraged. It also takes discipline to allow yourself to feel happy when something in your life is still unresolved. Many moms feel guilt about feeling good while something is hard. But joy and happiness can work together. When you give yourself permission to feel both, you open your heart instead of shutting it down.
Every Season Requires a Different Kind of Joy
One of the most freeing parts of this conversation is the reminder that joy changes with your season.
When Rachel’s children were little, her days were loud and full. Joy looked like tiny scraps of time. She would grab a coffee and take the long way home just to sit in the quiet for a few extra minutes.
Now her youngest is 16. The house is quieter. Joy looks like intentionally leaving the house to meet her adult daughter for lunch.
So often we expect ourselves to maintain the same capacity, productivity, and energy across every season of life. Then we feel guilty when we cannot.
But you cannot compare your current season to someone else’s. You cannot even compare it to your own past season. The version of you with toddlers is different from the version of you with teenagers, or grown children, or no children at all.
Stop waiting for a future season to allow yourself joy. Learn to cultivate it in the one you are in right now.
Finding Joy in the Ordinary
Most of life is not made up of highlight reels. It is made up of ordinary, repetitive days.
Rachel reminds us that ordinary is what we crave when life falls apart. During seasons of disruption, like the early days of the pandemic, what did everyone want? Normal. And normal is ordinary.
She shares a powerful story about cleaning her son’s room and suddenly realizing that there are parents who would give anything to clean their child’s room again. In that moment, vacuuming shifted from a chore to a gift.
That does not mean every task becomes magical. It means you occasionally pause and remember, this ordinary moment is part of the life I once hoped for.
And if gratitude feels out of reach, try something playful. Put on epic soundtrack music and fold laundry like you are in a movie. It sounds simple, but it shifts your energy and breaks up the monotony.
One Small Shift That Changes Everything
If you take one thing from this episode, let it be this.
Choose one small good thing each day.
Not a massive life overhaul. Not a five year plan. Just one small act of joy, happiness, calm, or care. Maybe it is stepping outside for five quiet minutes. Maybe it is texting a friend. Maybe it is writing “best day ever” on your calendar when you actually have one, so you can look back on it when you forget.
Those small daily choices add up. Over the course of a year, that is 365 small acts of choosing something good. You will not stay the same.
Joy is not waiting for you at the end of the to do list. It is available now, in the middle of your real, messy, beautiful life.
If you want support creating work life harmony and building a practice that fits your life, join CPA MOMS here: https://cpamoms.com/start
Rachel Marie Martin is the author of Get Your Spark Back, Mom Enough, and The Brave Art of Motherhood, and the founder of FindingJoy.net, a global online community reaching millions each month.
Her work has been featured on The Today Show, Good Morning America, NPR, and The Huffington Post. Through her writing and speaking, Rachel helps others rediscover their spark, create alignment in the in-between seasons of life, and live each day with intention and joy. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee, and is a mom to seven.