The Shape My Joy Takes III: The Language Of My Laughter

This is a collection of essays not about surviving—but about living. Not about pain—but about presence. These are not reactionary—they are revolutionary in their refusal to look back.

This is a 10-part series of personal essays. Check back each day to read the next essay.

Want more softness, strength, and quiet joy? Click here to read the full Shape My Joy Takes series.

There’s a sound I make now that I didn’t used to.

It’s not delicate. Not restrained. It doesn’t shrink itself or pause to check if it’s too loud for the room. It bursts out of me, uninvited and glorious—wide open and unashamed.

I laugh differently now.

My laughter has edges softened by safety and bellies full of air. It doesn’t stick in my throat the way it used to. It rises from someplace deep and certain. From knowing I’m allowed to take up space in the world. That joy is not a borrowed thing I have to return when I’ve had enough.

I laugh with my husband until my face hurts and tears roll down my cheeks. Stupid things. Inside jokes. Things we’ve said a hundred times but still find funny. Sometimes he makes a single sound and I lose it. Sometimes it’s the way he raises an eyebrow. Sometimes it’s just that we’re safe and we know it and our laughter is the sound of that knowledge echoing back and forth between us like a game of catch we never drop.

I laugh with friends who love me without a scoreboard. Who know what I’ve survived and don’t treat me like I’m fragile, just precious. We send voice notes and memes and messages that spiral into fits of ridiculous giggles, and I think, this is medicine. This is how women keep each other alive.

I laugh when I dance in the kitchen, when I burn the toast, when I trip over my own feet and no one is watching. I laugh when my husky lets out a long, dramatic sigh like she’s got taxes to do. I laugh when my cat glares at me for existing.

There are mornings when I remember a moment from years ago—some perfect, fleeting second—and I laugh again, quietly, just for me. And in that moment, I am full.

There is a kind of laughter that breaks chains.
Mine does that now.

It isn’t nervous. It isn’t performative. It doesn’t ask for approval.
It just is. Like breath. Like tide. Like truth.

And maybe the most beautiful thing is this:
I laugh now not to cope, but to celebrate.
Not to cover sadness, but because I’m not sad.

My home knows the sound of my joy.
My walls echo with it.
And I do not silence it for anyone.