Joy Emersion L.A. with Thea Monyeé

Throughout my life as a solopreneur, there are some collaborations that feel strategic, and others that feel inevitable.

Working alongside Thea has always felt like the second kind.

Through our ongoing work tending Bringing Flowers project together, we’ve been living inside a shared question:

What does it actually take to stay human while telling the truth about grief and still making room for joy?

And we talmbout joy and grief as daily practices that have consequences for how we move, how we rest, how we imagine liberation.

What I’ve learned from Thea, again and again, is that joy is not a mood. It is a metric. A way of measuring whether our lives, our movements, and our communities are actually life-giving.

Anyone serious about collective liberation has to be willing to ask that question honestly. Not just what are we fighting against, but what are we orienting toward?

That is the premise Thea has been sharpening through her work for years, and it’s the reason I’m genuinely excited to step into this particular format she’s offering now.

Joy Emersion ATL in Atlanta, GA, USA

Imagine a full day of inviting, exploring, grieving, acknowledging, reimagining, and integrating joy education and practices that will ripple through you and your life indefinitely. Welcome to the world of joy educator and facilitator, Thea Monyeé.After years of experience as a marriage and family therapist specializing in diversity and decolonization of mental health, as well as her experience as an artist, podcaster, and writer, Thea Monyeé shifted her focus to joy education and advocacy as a path of self and collective liberation through her company MarleyAyo. From The Blacker The Brain, to Shaping The Shift Podcast, to Hold Us Sacred Retreats, her work consistently centers the co-creation of sustainable healing and liberation practices rooted in joy and connection.Joy Emersion ATL will be held at The Rest Spot, a community and space that shares Thea’s desire to create worry-free ecosystems for those seeking to recover, reimagine, and reclaim their right to a joy centered life.

Joy Emersion LA is one of the most intimate offerings Thea has created. It’s happening in Los Angeles—the city she calls home, the city that has shaped her, challenged her, and taught her how layered belonging can be. And it’s being held on land stewarded by people she loves, at Greenstone Farm & Sanctuary, beneath elder trees and well-tended soil that knows something about endurance.

This context matters. Because when Thea speaks of being (Black), Wild, & Loved, she is naming something specific and expansive at the same time. Black bodies, yes—and also every form of othering that makes us wonder whether the societies we live in can ever truly love us in our fullest, most untamed state. This day is an invitation to explore that question without rushing past the grief that inevitably surfaces alongside it.

This is a full-day immersion with nourishing meals, spacious reflection, intimate connection, and room to release what no longer serves. Participants will leave with what Thea calls a joy starter set: tools for building a life where joy is not an afterthought, but a guiding measure.

If you’ve been following our work through Bringing Flowers, this gathering is a chance to experience one of the living questions at the heart of that project, held with depth and care by someone I trust deeply. And if this isn’t for you, but someone came to mind as you were reading, share it with them, Love.

Bless up!