Tomiisin Balogun spends her days helping women understand their emotions, work through painful experiences and find their way back to joy. As an emotional wellness counsellor and coach, author and founder of JOY HQ, she has built her work around something many people struggle with: learning how to deal with what hurts.
Through JOY HQ, she runs emotional healing programmes, coaching sessions, retreats and conferences. She is also the woman behind The Healing Hangout Experience, a gathering that brings people together around conversations about healing and emotional wellness. Through JOY Nation, she has built a community of more than 500 women, while her #ProjectHope initiative provides women with resources to support their healing journeys.
Popularly called The JOY Merchant, the name is quite befitting. Whether you meet Tomiisin physically or encounter her online, there is a certain kind of joy she exudes. It is the kind that makes you wonder what it takes to get to a place where joy is not just something you talk about but something you carry into a room.
Perhaps this is part of why she wants other people, especially women, to experience it too. But as I read more about her, I began to realise that her work is not simply about helping women smile or encouraging them to look on the bright side of life. It is about helping them confront the things that make joy difficult to find in the first place.
And this is where her story gets interesting.
Tomiisin’s journey has not been without its difficult moments. As a young girl, she experienced academic setbacks that affected her confidence and self-esteem. The struggle to gain university admission and the disappointment of not always performing as expected could easily have become the defining story of her life. But her story did not end there. She went on to graduate with a First Class degree in Agricultural Economics from Joseph Ayo Babalola University, a remarkable achievement in light of the academic challenges she had faced.
Her journey through those years was also one of discovering her identity, rebuilding her confidence and finding strength in her Christian faith. Rather than allowing earlier disappointments to define what was possible for her, she continued to grow into a woman who understood that difficult beginnings did not have to determine the outcome of a life.
But academic struggles were not the only painful experiences that shaped her. The loss of her twin boys at birth was another deeply painful chapter in her life. It was the kind of loss that could leave a person searching for answers, struggling to make sense of what had happened and trying to find a way forward while carrying grief that words may not fully capture.
It was from the reality of pain and the journey towards healing that Purposeful Pain emerged. The book explores the possibility of rising from painful experiences into purpose and power. Knowing that the loss of her boys was part of the pain behind this story gives the book a more personal dimension. It is not simply an exploration of an idea; it is connected to the difficult work of navigating loss and finding a way to keep living, growing and believing.
Her Christian faith became an important part of how she understood pain and found her way through it. Rather than seeing difficult experiences only as things to overcome and forget, she began to recognise how they could become opportunities for deeper growth, healing and a stronger relationship with God.
Alongside Purposeful Pain, Tomiisin has authored Catharsis and JOY Pills, extending her work around emotional wellness, healing and personal growth. Across these books, there is a recurring concern with what happens inside us when life becomes difficult, and how we can begin to make sense of our experiences rather than simply burying them.
What fascinates me about this part of her story is the connection between the woman she was becoming and the work she does today. The desire to help women heal feels less like a career choice made in isolation and more like a purpose shaped by lived experience. She understands that pain can affect how people see themselves, how they relate with others and what they believe is possible for their lives.
And sometimes, what a person needs is not another motivational speech or someone rushing to tell them that everything will be fine. Sometimes, they need a safe space where they can acknowledge what hurts without feeling judged, pressured to explain themselves or expected to recover on someone else’s timetable.
That is an important part of emotional wellness: creating room for people to feel, process and heal rather than simply teaching them to appear strong.
It is also reflected in the spaces Tomiisin has created through JOY HQ and the Healing Hangout Experience. These are opportunities for people to have honest conversations about their emotional lives, recognise what they are carrying and begin to work through it. Her Emotional Healing Immersion programme takes that commitment further, offering a more intentional space for healing and personal growth.
As her work has grown, so has the community around it. JOY Nation brings women together around shared experiences, growth and emotional wellness, while #ProjectHope helps make resources available to women who need support on their healing journeys. The expansion of the Healing Hangout Experience beyond Nigeria, including its international edition in London, also points to how widely these conversations resonate.
There is another part of Tomiisin’s journey that I find particularly interesting. Her professional life did not begin in emotional wellness. She built experience in financial research, data analysis, client relations and IT project management before moving into coaching, mentoring and emotional empowerment. She also worked as a resident mentor and programme facilitator, supporting people through an extended coaching accelerator programme.
Over time, she has built relationships with established coaches, including Debola Deji-Kurunmi (DDK) and Lanre Olusola, collaborating with them to deliver coaching programmes. Her work has also brought her to platforms such as Channels Television, giving her opportunities to contribute to wider conversations and reach audiences beyond the communities she works with directly.
That background brings another dimension to her work today. Emotional wellness is deeply personal, but it also has implications for how people work, lead, make decisions and relate with others. As a programme and project manager, corporate trainer and coach, Tomiisin brings together an understanding of people, structured programme delivery and the importance of creating environments where individuals can grow.
Her work increasingly sits at the intersection of emotional wellbeing and productivity, helping people understand that how they feel is not separate from how they function. This is especially important in workplaces and leadership spaces where people are often expected to keep performing, even when they are struggling internally.
Beyond her professional responsibilities, Tomiisin is a wife and mother of three, living in Egypt. She is also pursuing a master’s degree in public health, adding another dimension to her interest in wellbeing. The different parts of her life may appear distinct at first, but they meet around a common concern: what people need to live healthier, more meaningful and more whole lives.
Perhaps this is what makes Tomiisin’s work so meaningful. Behind the name The JOY Merchant is a woman whose journey has taught her that joy is not always the absence of pain, but something we can begin to experience even as we work through it.
And so, when I think of Tomiisin Balogun, I think less about the joy she carries into a room and more about the women who might leave the spaces she creates with a better understanding of themselves, their experiences and what is still possible for their lives. Perhaps that is the real work of The JOY Merchant.
