By Kimberly Mitchell
I used to think joy was the reward you got after everything was perfect. After the weight was lost. After the business hit seven figures. After the loving relationship. After the house was organized. After, after, after.
At 54, I had checked all the success boxes. Six-figure business. Board positions. Community impact. But I’d wake up unable to get out of bed, iron dirty clothes because laundry felt impossible, and wear wigs to hide my matted hair that I didn’t have the strength to wash. Everyone saw achievement. Nobody saw the woman behind it, exhausted from decades of performing different versions of herself.
Then I discovered something that changed everything: Joy isn’t the destination. It’s the fuel.
The Lie We’ve Been Sold
We’ve been taught that joy comes from achieving more, fixing ourselves, or finally becoming “enough.” The self-help industry sells us another strategy, another ten-step routine, another way to optimize our already-overwhelming lives.
But here’s what nobody talks about: You’re not exhausted because you’re doing too much. You’re depleted because you’re splitting yourself into pieces.
Society rewards women for this splitting. We get praised for being ‘low maintenance’ when we hide our needs, celebrated for ‘having it all together’ when we’re falling apart inside.
The confident leader hides the anxious woman. The perfect mother conceals the exhausted human. The successful professional buries the unfulfilled soul. We become experts at showing only what’s “appropriate” while hiding what’s real. And that constant splitting is what’s stealing your joy.
I call it separation, and it’s epidemic among women. We’ve spent decades dividing ourselves into acceptable and unacceptable parts, performing different versions for different audiences, maintaining exhausting mental inventories of who gets to see which pieces of us.
When Success Becomes a Prison
By the time we hit our prime years—40s, 50s, 60s—we’ve repeated these patterns thousands of times. We’ve conditioned our neural pathways deep enough for them to become second nature. We’ve built entire lives around our separated selves.
The cost? Chronic exhaustion from maintaining multiple personas. Deep disconnection from your authentic self. Physical symptoms nobody can explain. Relationships that only know parts of you. And that nagging feeling of “is this all there is?”
Whether you’re navigating divorce, an empty nest or career success that feels hollow, the exhaustion is the same. It’s the weight of carrying all those separated selves.
When COVID forced me to pivot my event planning business overnight, something cracked open. Not the business—that took months to transform into a six-figure training business. What cracked was the facade. I couldn’t maintain all my separated selves anymore. The high-functioning depression I’d hidden for years became impossible to ignore.
That’s when I had to choose: Keep splitting myself into pieces or learn to live whole.
Integration: The Strategy Nobody Teaches
This is what finally broke the mold: Joy isn’t the endpoint. It’s what naturally emerges when you stop abandoning parts of yourself.
Think about it. Every time you choose to suppress a feeling, hide a need, or perform a role that isn’t authentic, you’re creating separation. Your brain literally develops neural pathways that reinforce this splitting. After decades, it becomes your default operating system.
But the good news is that your brain can rewire at any age. Neuroplasticity—your brain’s ability to create new neural pathways—doesn’t expire at 30. In fact, your prime years are perfect for this transformation because you finally have the wisdom to know what matters and the courage to choose differently.
Integration means reclaiming all the parts you’ve scattered for safety and bringing them home. Not all at once—that would overwhelm parts that have been in exile for decades. But 2-5% at a time. Small, consistent choices that create new neural pathways.
Joy as Your Baseline, Not Your Reward
When I started integrating—speaking to my separated parts in the mirror, honoring the needs I’d suppressed, allowing ALL of me to exist—something shifted. Joy stopped being something I was working toward and became my operating system.
I chose to forego the fake happiness and toxic positivity in exchange for the deep, sustainable joy that comes from living as my whole self.
At 56, I learned to roller skate. I was petrified but the girl who’d been told she was “the worst dribbler ever” finally got to play! I acknowledged ‘No’ as a complete sentence. I put a dotted line around my comfort zone which left me open to so many more possibilities.
This is what joy as a baseline looks like: It’s choosing wholeness over performance, integration over improvement, authenticity over approval instead of waiting until you’re “perfect” to live fully.
The Ignite Revolution
When you make joy your baseline through integration, even success transforms. That exhausting achievement built on separation is replaced with sustainable success built on wholeness. Your decisions align with your values. Your energy regenerates instead of depletes. Your relationships deepen because people finally meet the real you. More importantly, YOU get to reunite with the real you!
All those parts you’ve hidden, suppressed, or abandoned? They hold your power. Your creativity. Your joy! You’re not becoming someone new, you’re integrating who you’ve always been.
The confident professional AND the woman who needs rest. The caring mother AND the person with her own dreams. The high achiever AND the human who sometimes needs help. Both/and, not either/or.
Your Prime Is Your Time
Women in their prime have something younger women don’t: We’ve lived enough to know that performing for approval doesn’t work. We’ve achieved enough to know that external success without internal alignment is empty. We’ve survived enough to know we’re stronger than we think.
If you’re reading this thinking ‘but I can’t just stop being everything to everyone’—this is your permission slip. Your wholeness is demanding to be heard. Your separated selves are saying “enough.” Your wholeness trying to emerge. Making joy your baseline is a revolutionary act of integration. Of saying: I’m done splitting myself into acceptable and unacceptable parts. I’m ready to live whole.
Because here’s the truth that changes everything: Joy isn’t what you get when you finally become enough. Joy is what emerges when you realize you always were enough.
The world needs integrated women. Women who’ve stopped performing and started living. Women who’ve made joy their baseline, not their someday reward. Women who understand that true success isn’t about doing more—it’s about being whole.
Your inner fire is waiting to be integrated. Not to be earned, but to be chosen. Not someday, but today! And when you choose wholeness, you give every woman around you permission to do the same. That’s how revolutions begin—one integrated woman at a time.
Welcome to the integration revolution. Welcome to joy as your baseline. Welcome to ignite.
Kimberly Mitchell is a mental health advocate, veteran, and transformational leader dedicated to empowering individuals and small businesses. Growing up in a household where independence was a necessity, she excelled academically. Her resilience was tested when she lost her father at 16, but she channeled her determination into service, enlisting in the Air Force. As the only woman in her Vehicle Maintenance training class, she set a new standard by earning the highest test scores and later served in Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm. Transitioning into civilian life, Kimberly pursued a career in training and leadership development, working across multiple industries, from technology rollouts to government initiatives. Simultaneously, she explored entrepreneurship, running event planning and photo booth businesses before pivoting to a thriving six-figure training business.
Despite professional success, Kimberly faced personal challenges that led to a transformative self-discovery journey. Seeking answers through the VA health system, she was diagnosed with mild depression, which became the catalyst for developing the ‘Journey to Joy’ Personal Transformation System. This breakthrough allowed her to reclaim her happiness, reinforcing her belief that joy is a powerful force for change. Now, she dedicates her time to helping others break free from limiting beliefs and external dependencies, ensuring they recognize their own potential. Kimberly believes that self-sufficiency and joy are the keys to transformation. Her personal mission remains simple yet profound: to make a positive impact on people she may never meet.
You can follow Kimberly on Instagram to learn more about her work.
