Remember Joy
Begin with one real moment. A weekly prompt helps you find a person, place, sound, scent, kindness, surprise, or ordinary moment you may not have thought about for years.
The art and science of joy
Your life is filled with joy worth remembering.
A science-informed spoken storytelling practice designed to help you notice more joy, remember the good that has already been part of your life, and experience the power of sharing those memories in your own voice.
One weekly promptOne spoken storyOne growing practice of noticing joy
A laugh in the kitchen.
A familiar face.
A place that felt like home.
A small kindness.
The Visual Joy Postcard
Imagine taking a photograph with your memory.
Rather than trying to tell everything about a person, relationship, trip, or season of your life, we return to one particular moment.
A Visual Joy Postcard has edges. It gives us somewhere to go. Where were you? Who was there? What could you see, hear, smell, or touch? What was happening just before you noticed the joy?
ONE MOMENT
Not the whole trip. One particular ferry ride.
Not every reason you love a place. One morning when the light touched the water and you knew you were exactly where you wanted to be.
That is the postcard.This is more than storytelling
You do not need an extraordinary life.
You simply need a life.
Somewhere inside it are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of moments worth remembering. Joy Story Hour™ helps you find them again.
The Joy Story Hour™ Method
Four movements. One deeply human practice.
Speak Joy
Bring the memory into your own voice. Tell it aloud, let the details return, and trust that it does not have to be polished. It only has to be yours.
Share Joy
Joy becomes relational when someone else receives it. Share your spoken story with the community and make room for the stories of others.
Multiply Joy
One person’s story often awakens another person’s memory. Joy moves from life to life, and one remembered moment becomes many.
Remember Joy → Speak Joy → Share Joy → Multiply Joy
Your weekly Joy Story practice
The practice travels with you.
The heart of Joy Story Hour™ is a weekly spoken practice you can join from wherever you are. You do not have to arrange your whole week around a meeting time.
- 1Remember one moment.
Let the weekly prompt take you somewhere in your life.
- 2Record your story.
Use your phone. Most Joy Stories are five minutes or less.
- 3Share it.
Post your audio story in the community space.
- 4Listen.
Come back and hear the stories other members share.
Monthly live gathering
See the people behind the voices.
Once each month, we come together live to explore Joy Science in plain language, hear selected stories, reflect on what we have noticed, and experience the practice together.
SECOND THURSDAY1:00 PM CentralChosen to welcome an international community
No scorecards here
You do not need to be a storyteller.
This is not Toastmasters, a public-speaking competition, or a performance workshop. You do not need a dramatic beginning, perfect arc, clever ending, or stage-worthy delivery.
The purpose is remembering. The purpose is noticing. The purpose is speaking. The purpose is connection. The purpose is joy.
Ready to experience it?
Your story already has a place here.
Registration is free. Reserve your place through Zoom, and your access details will be sent directly to you.
Explore the science
A positive memory may still have something to give us.
Joy Story Hour™ draws inspiration from research across autobiographical memory, emotion regulation, self-voice processing, social connection, savoring, attention, and positive emotion.
Positive autobiographical memory and stress
Recalling positive autobiographical memories after an acute stressor was associated with less negative emotion and a smaller cortisol response than recalling neutral memories.
Why it matters: We retrieve real experiences from your life rather than thinking about happiness in the abstract.
Read the research on PubMed ↗Your brain and your own voice
Brain-imaging research has found differences in how the brain responds to one’s own voice during certain emotion-regulation self-talk exercises.
Why it matters: We explore what may be different when you do not merely remember a story, but hear yourself tell it.
Read the research on PubMed ↗Joy Story Hour™ is a well-being and storytelling practice. It is not therapy and does not replace medical or mental-health care. Research is shared as context, not as a promise of a medical or neurological result.
Your story already matters
Take five minutes. We are here because your story is worth hearing.
Someone brought you coffee.
Your father called every Sunday.
A shopkeeper began recognizing you.
Your favorite song came on.
Your child reached for your hand.
These are not small stories. These are lives.Joy is not denial
Your life contains more than its hardest chapter.
This practice is not about pretending everything is wonderful, ignoring grief, denying pain, or covering hard experiences with positive thinking.
A human life can contain sorrow and joy at the same time. We simply make sure that what hurts does not become the only thing we remember to notice.
Who is Joy Story Hour™ for?
If you have lived, you have stories.
01You want to notice more of the good already present in your life.
02You are interested in practical, science-informed ways to support well-being.
03You love meaningful conversation but do not need another formal class.
04You want more human connection in a disconnected world.
05You would like to preserve memories in your own voice.
06You believe ordinary stories matter.
Come as you are
You do not need a better story. You only need a memory.
Reserve Your Free PlaceFree registration through Zoom · Access details sent after registrationStart building your collection of joy
Fifty stories. One year. A life preserved in your own voice.
Imagine recording one five-minute Joy Story each week. Not a formal autobiography. Not a perfectly organized memoir. Something more alive: your voice, your people, your places, your laughter, and the ordinary moments that eventually become precious.
We are not only experiencing joy in the present. We are preserving pieces of a life.
Why I created Joy Story Hour™
Meet Deronda Aiken
The Joy Ambassador · Storyteller · Legacy-builder
For more than six years, Deronda has taught neuroscience-informed ideas and practices around joy: how we notice it, build our capacity for it, and recognize the power of small moments.
Her lifelong love of stories led her into the intersection between memory, voice, human connection, and joy. She began asking what happens when we say a good memory aloud, hear it in our own voice, and share it with someone who genuinely wants to listen.
Those questions became Joy Story Hour™—where the science helps us understand what may be happening, the art helps us experience it, and the story makes it human.
Come experience Joy Story Hour™
Bring back one tiny thing you had almost forgotten.
Start with a memory. Bring it back. Speak it. Share it. See what it awakens.
Register Free for Joy Story HourOne weekly prompt · One spoken story · One monthly live gathering