Ten Years, Ten Women: Joy

Joy joined Better Me in 2023, the most recent of the ten women in this collection to enroll. Before the program, she was simply living her daily life as usual. Nothing was in crisis, but nothing moving forward with much intention either. What drew her in was the program's focus on supporting women and women's empowerment, and the idea of a space where women could share experience and knowledge with each other rather than navigate things alone.

She says she learned things through Better Me that she'd genuinely never known before, and that the program made her proud of herself almost immediately after joining. Early on, she told friends she wanted to finish building her house, a goal she'd set aside for years. Today, that house is complete, something she describes as honestly beyond what she'd imagined for herself when she first said it out loud.

She credits the shift to more than financial planning alone. It was the community around her, other women working toward their own goals at the same time, that helped her believe her own future was worth planning for. Sharing experience with others, she says, helped her realize her life wasn't the worst, and that many people around her were facing their own difficulties too.

What she's most proud of today is the fuller picture: work knowledge, self-love, saving money, and planning ahead, four things she names together, as if none of them fully stand on their own without the others.