What Makes Someone Spark Joy?

5 Practices we return to at every Camp Joy Retreat that can help you return to yourself (and that you can begin today)

By Monique Kavanagh

In May of this year, my sister, Marea Kavanagh, was featured as a "Glow Getter" in Chapel Hill Magazine.

Click the photo above to read the full article :-)

It's a feature that celebrates people who bring light to their community simply by how they show up. And what a wonderful name, it captures something we see all the time.

At Camp Joy, our guiding idea has always been to Spark Joy and that all women have it inside themselves.

Reading the article made me stop for a moment because what the writer, Laura Zimmerman Whayne, captured about Marea is what I have had the privilege of seeing my entire life.

She's not perfect (sorry, sister). She's not performing or trying to impress anyone. She's grounded. Curious. Present. Like our mother, she has an extraordinary ability to be completely in a conversation. When she's with you, you're the only person in the room. She makes people feel seen, heard, and completely at ease.

I know I'm biased, but I'm certainly not the only one who thinks she's pretty remarkable.

And it made me wonder . . . what actually creates that feeling? At Camp Joy Retreats, we watch it happen every retreat.

Women arrive carrying careers, caregiving, endless to-do lists, expectations, responsibilities, and a thousand tiny decisions. Then, over a few days, something shifts.

They slow down, laugh more than they expect to, have conversations they didn't know they needed and remember parts of themselves that had quietly slipped into the background.

They feel like themselves again. It's not magic, and it's not personality, it's a collection of small, intentional practices.

Here are five practices we return to again and again at Camp Joy Retreats. The beautiful part is that you don't have to wait until you're sitting around one of our dinner tables in Provence or watching the sunset in the Blue Ridge Mountains to begin.

You can start today.

The Real Secret

People often ask us what makes Camp Joy special. The answer is that it isn't one big transformational moment.

It's a collection of beautiful little ones, hundreds of reminders of the version of you who feels calm, joyful, connected, and fully alive hasn't disappeared. She's been there all along.

And if these five practices feel familiar when you arrive at Camp Joy someday, that's wonderful, it means you've already begun.

Warmly,

Monique