A colleague shared a study about Autistic joy with me last week. I thanked them, feeling seen. They continued: “…and i immediately thought of you when i read ‘joy’ as well.”
And with that, I had a word for 2026: Joy. I’ve never set a focus word for the year. I usually resist this, as I prefer to find my theme at the end, through reflection. (Very inductive analysis of me!).
It made me think about how often we might miss considering what brings us and our colleagues joy. Not as part of a strategy or a way to deny or brush aside challenges, but simply as a human part of our day-to-day processes. The things that bring delight and make our faces light up.
I find joy in conversations and connecting with people. I find joy in writing and thinking about systems. I find joy in research, inquiry, and analysis, as well as in discovering connections between things.
But while I look to these things to find joy, as sources, they don’t quite capture the experience of joy that accompanies them.
I experience joy in sitting with complexity and in community. I experience joy as a path forward in leadership, not shying away from challenges when they arise, but choosing to lean further into understanding and purpose when encountering them. I experience joy in refusing to be a single storyline, and as a reluctance to simplify people when I encounter them in their most contradictory and multifaceted states.
And I’m not sure these are experiences we usually think of in terms of joy, but I do think there’s value in finding joy where we least expect or want to.
In this way, joy disrupts and resists.
And I recognise this in the way that Autistic joy defies and resists narratives of autism as a tragedy. Autistic people experience joy, and often from sources and in ways that allistic (non-autistic) people don’t expect.
I often experience joy through hyperfixating and hyperfocusing on particular interests (PhD topic included), with an intensity that is not always understood. I also experienced joy when a colleague gifted me a tactile bookmark (after noticing my joy and then sudden disappointment when I thought I’d found one at an event).
I see similar resistance to norms of joy with the concept of disability pride. Here, pride is not about ignoring challenges or discrimination, but as a recognition of human diversity and inherent worth, set against a refusal to be defined by ableism or assumptions. It’s complex and relative for each of us.
And I know that refusal to be defined by assumptions has led me to experience joy. (Even if it can take some time to find).
Both Autistic joy and disability pride are concepts that, for many people, still form unlikely combinations. Broader society may not expect or accept them; yet, those who experience Autistic joy or disability pride may very well embrace the complexity of these experiences, or have a complex relationship with them.
I imagine I’ll continue to find and experience joy in complex and unexpected ways in 2026.
And I love that I’m not the only one thinking about it.
The conversation and screenshot that prompted this blog post have been shared with permission.
Because you have, if course, started me on the path down another rabbit hole, I’ll point you towards this explanation which may work as a “holding place” for autistic joy via https://theartofautisticjoy.com/:
“Through the practice of sensory self-care we learn to make space for ourselves in harsh emotions, physical, and social environments, as well as subvert oppressive neurotypical expectations and logics that suppress us. Through this, we find liberation that is specific to the autistic positionality, and alongside that liberation comes autistic joy.”
I love the immediate flash of brain joy that I experienced in being able to think of “thinking work”, including hyperfocus, as a form of sensory self care. For something that contains the term neuro, we neurodivergent folk are often positioned as having separated processes whereas this reminded me that our brains are the location of much joy (not just the typical 5 senses that we are often taught).
So *raises coffee cup* here’s to thought and the experiences of joy and joyful experience it might bring.
Delighted to be a source of scholarly rabbit holes! And thanks for sharing the site and quote. I like the focus on liberation specific to autistic positionality and your description of ‘thinking work’ as sensory self-care.