We’re looking forward to introducing you to Joy Shaw. Check out our conversation below.
Hi Joy, thank you so much for joining us today. We’re thrilled to learn more about your journey, values and what you are currently working on. Let’s start with an ice breaker: What are you being called to do now, that you may have been afraid of before?
I’m finally working on my first book. When I graduated from high school, my English teacher gifted me a journal. Inside the cover, she wrote a note saying she couldn’t wait to read my first book — and here I am, nearly three decades later, bringing it to life.
For years, I wanted to share my story in a way that could encourage and inspire others on their personal growth journeys. But first, I had to become the hero of my own mythic tale. Like many, I carried worthiness wounds and a voice that asked, “Why would anyone want to hear what I have to say?”
Yet if the teachers and guides who shaped me hadn’t shared their stories, I wouldn’t be who I am today. Now, I see my role as a wayshower — offering hope and modeling that there is a path to healing for everything. If I could find my way to wholeness, others can too. As Ram Dass said, “We are all just walking each other home.”
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I’m Joy Shaw — a holistic coach, speaker, and transformational facilitator — but more than that, I’m a stroke survivor, a recently empty-nested mother, and a guide who understands the transformative power of healing through mind, body, and spirit. Nearly losing my life awakened me to an ineffable presence and ignited a lifelong devotion to intentional living and embodiment. Through that threshold experience, I didn’t just reclaim my health; I discovered my purpose.
With over 15 years supporting families through childbirth, parenthood, and cultivating true intimacy and communication — and decades walking my own path of healing — I bring a rare blend of experiential wisdom, intuitive insight, and grounded presence to my work. My journey through trauma, motherhood, and radical recovery shaped my ability to walk beside others, especially those standing at the edge of change, offering tools for integration, embodiment, and creative expression. I often think of myself as a “technician of the soul” — or even a “people mechanic” — helping people get their “vehicle” for the human experience in order, so they can navigate the road of life safely and beautifully.
I’m the creator of The Alchemy of Self-Mastery & Conscious Creation, a 12-part process I think of as a toolbox I teach clients to use — updating their “programming,” uncovering their authentic self, and consciously creating from that place. This process blends the mystical with the practical, the somatic with the spiritual. Whether I’m supporting someone through a crisis, a transformational journey, conscious expansion, or a deep remembering of self, I believe my primary role is to be a safe space. Healing happens in safety — and I can only hold that space for others when I cultivate it within myself. Every tool I share and principle I teach is something I actively practice. For me, leadership is simply modeling what we hope to inspire in others. When people feel safe, seen, and loved, they can return to wholeness.
Right now, I’m preparing to give my talk The Power of Presence at the Deep Tropics music festival, while also working on my first book. I’m climbing and bouldering every chance I get, each week, and hope to get back to Joshua Tree before the end of the year. It was where I first fell in love with this sport that supports me in so many ways. This fall, I’ll be leading workshops for couples and individuals in collaboration with other gifted facilitators in breathwork, somatic work, bodywork, and sound healing. At the heart of it all, my mission is to help people awaken to the sacred intelligence within them — so they can shift out of fear and survival-based programming and into process-driven, conscious creation, living as authentic expressions of who they truly are.
Okay, so here’s a deep one: What did you believe about yourself as a child that you no longer believe?
When I was young, I believed my worth came from being pleasing to others. My parents even gave me a simple “life formula” based on my name: Joy stood for Jesus, Others, You. It was meant to be a guiding principle, but what I absorbed was that my needs came last — that love and approval had to be earned by prioritizing everyone else.
In my early 20s, therapy gave me the language of codependency, and I began to see how this pattern — caring for others at the cost of myself — was rooted in a need to feel loved and significant through making others feel good. Growing up with traumatic elements in my environment, I became skilled at keeping the peace, even if it meant sacrificing my own.
Learning to love myself and place my own well-being at the center of my life felt foreign at first — almost selfish — but it became one of the most essential acts of healing I’ve ever undertaken. Now, I understand that caring for myself is what allows me to love and serve others in a way that’s authentic, sustainable, and free.
Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
There were many times I almost gave up. After my stroke, I quietly struggled for years with deep depression and moments of suicidal ideation. I had fought to stay alive for my children, and for a long time they were the only reason I got out of bed each morning — determined to heal physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. But as the years went on and the same painful patterns kept repeating, I sometimes wondered if they might have been better off without me. My worth still felt tied to my performance and my ability to make others happy.
Tenacity has always been both my greatest strength and my most challenging quality. It kept me getting up, over and over again, after every fall — but it also delayed some of my most important lessons. The breakthrough came when I realized every relationship in my life was simply a mirror, reflecting my relationship with myself. That was the moment I began to heal: when I chose to look honestly at myself from a place of love, to give myself the grace I so freely gave others, and to move from judgment into acceptance.
I came to see that the past belongs where it is, the future is imaginary, and the only place I can meet life is here, now. From that place of presence and open, loving awareness, I no longer got out of bed just for my children — I got out of bed for myself.
Next, maybe we can discuss some of your foundational philosophies and views? What do you believe is true but cannot prove?
I have experienced and witnessed these three things to be true, though I can’t necessarily prove them.
First, you can only meet someone as deeply as they have met themselves.
Second, every relationship — whether with a person, place, thing, substance, or environment — reflects the relationship we have with ourselves.
And third, any form of victim narrative, no matter how subtle, keeps us from fully healing and growing. There’s value in validating and processing the pain of our lived experiences — sometimes we even need a “victim season” to acknowledge what we’ve endured. But we can’t live there. Healing begins when we move into acceptance of what has passed, take ownership of where we are now, and choose our next steps from a place of presence and self-responsibility.
I also believe narcissistic and codependent patterns exist on a spectrum, and both reflect an underdeveloped sense of self. The focus shouldn’t be on labeling the pattern or staying locked in the role of victim, but on excavating the authentic self that didn’t get to fully form, becoming the wise and loving parent for that wounded inner child, and allowing them to grow. If every relationship mirrors our relationship with ourselves, then the way out of these patterns is to deeply meet ourselves — because we can only meet others as deeply as we have met ourselves.
Okay, so before we go, let’s tackle one more area. When do you feel most at peace?
I feel most at peace when I’m immersed in the natural world — bare feet on the earth, sun warming my skin, breathing in the scent of trees or wildflowers. Nature reminds me of my place in the greater whole and restores me to myself.
I’ve come to see my role as both a facilitator of personal transformation and an earth guardian. By helping people return to right relationship with themselves, I believe they naturally return to right relationship with their communities and with the living world that sustains us. When I’m in nature, my energy realigns, and I’m fortified for the space I hold for others — gently reminding them that they are not separate from nature, but extensions of it.
Contact Info:
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joyshawholistic/
- Twitter: https://x.com/joyshawholistic
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joyshawholistic/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@alchemizewithjoy
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@alchemizewithjoy
Image Credits
O’len Quinn (both photos from the back in pink shirt)
Lindsey Baydoun (the greenhouse photos)
