This Cold Joy

TODAY With Joy, always. Love, Libby #thiscoldjoy #coldexposure

What a surprise to wake up and see this. Thank you @oprahdaily for sharing. There are many reasons to get in the cold icy water. For me it’s less about the metrics and more about the friendships. Cold changes the body. Friendship changes a life. Read the full piece at Oprah Daily. Search “cold plunge”. #thiscoldjoy #coldexposure

The season of preorders is here! 
(Insert confetti and cold wind emojis here ❄️🎉) Which, yes, might sound a bit publishing industry-ish, but to me, it feels more like standing on the edge of the ocean, heart thumping, ready to jump in. A little nerve-wracking, a lot exhilarating. Cold Joy from @chroniclebooks is officially available for preorder and if you’ve ever walked into cold water, laughed through chattering teeth, found beauty in the blue - gray fog of an early morning… this book may be for you. It’s part memoir, part love letter to mama earth, part reminder that choosing joy - even when it’s hard, even when it’s freezing - is not just brave, it’s necessary. It’s how we stay alive to wonder. How we remember what matters. Now, real talk: preorders make a huge difference. HUGE. Like, make-or-break-a-book kind of difference. They help bookstores decide what to stock, help publishers believe in the book, and help this little story about wild-hearted joy find its way into the world. So I’m asking, hands a little shaky, but soul beaming, would you consider preordering Cold Joy? If you do, know this: I’ll be doing a very enthusiastic wild quirky dance (possibly in a cold river, TBD). It means the world. Truly.
Thank you for being here, for walking alongside, for believing in cold, wild, wonderful joy. Link in bio to preorder it at thiscoldjoy.com 
With love and goosebumps,
Libby Photo by wonderful mermaid Justine @ebb.and.flow.collective.sf 
#thiscoldjoy #PreorderMagic #choosejoy #ColdPlungeConfetti #coldexposure #wimhof @voited

📖 Still can’t quite believe this is real. @thiscoldjoy , just sitting there on the shelf of one of my forever favorite bookstores, like it’s totally normal.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ @mcnallyjackson Soho. Thank you. Someone go grab it (it’s signed) and send me a picture! 134 Prince Street, New York, NY 10012 Or get a copy at thiscoldjoy.com THANK YOU @chroniclebooks and @mcnallyjackson #dreamscometrue✨

Okay listen. May is the sneakiest gateway drug into cold water there is. The air has finally warmed up and the big warm sun is out. The water, meanwhile, is still holding onto February which means you can wade in for a minute and try it out without the whole rigmarole of ice. This is exactly the season I wrote Cold Joy for.
 Not the January version of this practice, which I love but which requires a particular flavor of nerve. The May version. The one where the water does the work and you are mostly showing up with curiosity.
 Inside the book: 
• How to begin 
• What’s actually happening in your body during those first wild breaths 
• The joy of community 
• Where the practice began, the history If you’ve been considering getting in the cold water for a while perhaps this book is for you or a friend. Available at ThisColdJoy.com Ox Libby

JOYFUL : CHAOS If the Sun is the source of flow in the economy of nature, what is the “Sun” of a human gift economy…? Maybe it is love. - Robin Wall Kimmerer #thiscoldjoy #coldexposure #newburyport

WIDE OPEN SPACES Each of us must cherish the natural world that surrounds us, from wide open countryside to tiny patches of green in our cities. - Sir David Attenborough As my mom used to say: We all have our part in protecting this planet. USE IT UP WEAR IT OUT or MAKE DO WITHOUT. #thiscoldjoy sunrise dance party #coldexposure

At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes enough...It is enough. - Toni Morrison #thiscoldjoy Thiscoldjoy.com 📖

COLD JOY 6 MONTH BDAY There is something about walking into a bookstore that still feels like a small miracle to me. The creativity of it. The quiet work of it. Someone, somewhere, decided these particular books belonged together in this particular room in this particular town. @mill_valley_depot_ in downtown Mill Valley is that kind of place. I think about what it means to choose to shop at an independent bookstore. To walk past the algorithm and into the actual world, where a person who has read the book looks you in the eye and says, this one, I think this one is for you. That does not happen on a website. It happens here. In rooms like this one Independent bookstores are not just charming. They are economic lifeline. For every $100 you spend at a local independent business, roughly $68 stays in your community. At a chain, that number drops to $43. At Amazon, even less finds its way back to the people and places you actually love. A few things worth knowing: . Independent bookstores pay local taxes that fund schools, parks, fire departments . They hand-sell books, meaning a human who has actually read it tells you why it matters . They host the authors, the readings, the moment we remember as a community. Walk in. Ask for a recommendation. Buy the book you didn’t know you needed. The Depot, Mill Valley. Oh! And thank you for such a joyful shelf of @thiscoldjoy . Thank you. Thiscoldjoy.com Get in the water with us @ebb.and.flow.collective.sf All welcome. Always. And you’re right, I could have brushed my hair and tidied up a bit…just had finished up a nice long hike, so here we are looking slightly feral.

The definition of Cold Joy With the mermaids of @ebb.and.flow.collective.sf Join us sometime! #bestdipever #thiscoldjoy

Create a community that is joyful and that is resistance. Build something beautiful as a response to the toxic. - Sister True Dedication @sistertruededication 🫧 Cold water is hot right now.
 More people finding their way to the water, to the wild, to the particular slightly unhinged joy of it. But the version of this practice I kept seeing in the mainstream looked nothing like the one I was living. The conversation was all protocol, data, temperature, minutes, measurements. All interesting, all important, just not why I got in the water.
 For me it was something else entirely. 
- The community of it. 
- The wildness of it. 
- The strange and specific thing that happens when you do something that is challenging, in a beautiful place, with people you trust. 
- How you walk out of the water and the whole world looks a little more possible than it did twenty minutes before.
 That is what Cold Joy is about. Not a number of minutes or a data point or a biohack with a measurable outcome. 

The holiness of showing up. 
The joy that lives inside the things that scare you a little. 
The way cold water in a gorgeous place with good people will change you in ways you cannot fully explain and will not want to.
 I wrote @thiscoldjoy because I wanted to tell you about that part of it. The part that has nothing to do with optimization and everything to do with being here. Here. With these mermaids and the sun on our face @ebb.and.flow.collective.sf Photo @sfwhitney #thiscoldjoy

At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes enough...It is enough. - Toni Morrison #thiscoldjoy