There is laughter worth fighting for, even when things get harder as we grow.
After another day of trying to carry the world on your shoulders—from tests that claim they’ll determine your future to friends with struggles you can’t fix—you long to get lost in a whimsical world that can lift the weight of growing up off your shoulders.
For a moment, you can. The characters start to feel real and their banter startles a laugh out of you. The heavy things you’ve been carrying start to slip away.
But as you read, you start to feel your joy suffocating under the complex and confusing worldbuilding and heavy, traumatic topics. Your laughter vanishes.
The exhaustion starts to weigh even heavier on your shoulders, confriming your fears that everything only gets harder from here—and that you won’t be able to handle the real world.
​
As you reach the end and the heroine changes the fate of her entire kingdom and that sinking feeling that you’re not doing enough grows.
You close the book without reading the happy epilogue that you feel like you haven’t done enough to earn. Your dreams feel even farther beyond your reach.
​Many good books zoom in on the heaviness of life.
But they miss the joy.
Hello! I'm Alyssa Bryant.
My own teenage years were very heavy and hard, navigating things that were often misunderstood by the adults in my life, and I’ve walked several friends through similar struggles. I know what it’s like to feel like your hard things are undervalued simply because you’re a teenager and you must just be overreacting. I can’t count the amount of times I heard that things only get worse and harder from here.
But I’m living proof that they’re wrong. Some things do get harder, yes. But there will be so much more to your life than the hard things.
I see you. I believe you that your pain is real and that you’re brave enough to face it. Let me show you that there is joy ahead.
Get a dose of joy in your inbox!
You'll get updates on my journey, silly stories, book recs, and a dose joy, whimsy, and hope to rest in. Plus, you'll get a free digital copy of my short story, The Language of Touch.
