Tag: life

2026- A New Response to the Happiness Project

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Last January, I leapt in to my New Year’s resolutions with vigor and excitement, focused on four areas- creativity, spirit, health, and connection. I had just read Gretchin Rubin’s book, “The Happiness Project” and decided to take on my own happiness project. I was excited to see where the project would take me and who I would become.

This time around I’m walking into the new year both tired and comfortable, but still with a fire that burns like the end of an incense stick. It’s small, but glowing, smoking, filling the whole room with a joyful, warm scent making the space come alive. I’m worn from the year at work. Special education is one of the toughest careers I’ve taken on in a life of many changes. I left school this year for winter break only to get hit by the flu. Between being sick and just being wiped out from teaching, most of my break was spent either sleeping or just laying low in my apartment trying to regain my energy.

I still love that idea of the Happiness Project. I gained a lot from it over the past year, building my meditation practice, reminding myself of the importance of balance, encouraging myself to pull out my art supplies, and learning that when fun becomes work it often fails to be fun anymore.

This year is special because it is the year that I am as old as my mother ever was. If I am lucky enough to keep on keeping on, I will have seen more years than she ever did. That seems so strange to me. She was so much older and wiser than I could ever dream to be, yet here I am. It seems something to celebrate and reflect on as it is both beautiful and confusing.

So, what do this year’s resolutions look like? How do I grow in gratitude and happiness? How do I come to know the woman who raised me and honor her existance?

I expect that a lot will continue from this past year. I’ll keep building my meditation practice. I’ll keep encouraging myself to delve deeper into my arts. This year I’ll be working on my children’s book “The Magic Blanket,” a story of my mother’s passing. It will be my first book and, with luck, maybe not my last. I’ll keep seeking balance in life, finding those ways to get out and play, not allowing myself to get to caught in my work life, and continuing to honor the life I’ve been given with good food, exercise, play, song, and celebration.

It doesn’t have the same structure and I won’t be tracking my progress in a detailed, daily way, but it’s written now so I have a place to come back to, to see if I’m doing what I’ve wanted to and to hold myself accountable. What are you seeking in the year coming?

What Happens to Hungry Kids?

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My work for social justice for the past few years has largely been working in special education. It looks a lot different than my days running non-profits or organizing on the streets, but ultimately the same questions are there. It’s always about recognizing the underlying issues if we want to find the long term answers.

Because of the federal government shut down SNAP is running out. Millions of people will be losing the benefits that make it possible for them to feed themselves and their families on November 1st. Many states are jumping in to hold off the crash and to keep people fed.

As a teacher at a school that serve many families that receive SNAP benefits, I’m wondering what’s going to happen. How long will states be able to keep their finger in the dike to stop the hunger flood? What will be cut from those state budgets to make it possible to keep the families fed?

Mostly, I find myself asking what happens not only in the loss of SNAP but in the fear of the loss? When families are in that spot of having to choose whether to buy food or pay rent, which will they choose? So many families are already making tough choices to make ends meet and it impacts our kids far beyond the dinner table. Families are choosing between buying food or paying for gas. When they can’t keep gas in the car, kids don’t get to school. In many schools this means that not only are they losing out on their education, but they’ve also missed out on breakfast, lunch, and probably a snack which they were entitled to via free and reduced meal programs. It’s an awful circle. Not enough money for food and gas, so buy gas, then no food at home so skip eating from lunch until the next day. Buy food and well, can’t get to school and parents can’t get to work.

I wonder how our attendance rates will be affected in upcoming weeks with tightening budgets and already stressed parents facing yet another strain making it more and more to keep themselves together and get their kids to school. I wonder how behaviors will change. Kids are ultimately mirrors of the stresses in their parents’ lives.

How to we amplify the voices of these kids and their families so that those in Washington can hear them? How do we make their struggle visible? How do we take this moment in time of losing SNAP and point to where it leads us with kids going hungry, struggling in school, struggling in life, and just not going anywhere?

From Broken to Owning Happiness

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I think it was sometime early in college when I first got the label “borderline depression.” I wonder if there’s anything worse healthcare can do so simply and in such an offhand way for someone who’s dealing with feeling down than giving them labels like that? It took a long time to get over the labeling. Sometimes I still feel its hurt. The label told me I was broken and unfixable. It echoed what I was feeling at the time, that I was less than and unworthy.

There is much that I have to be thankful for that got me past that label western medicine dropped on me and brought me to this point where I own my happiness and can take on things like the happiness project that I’m doing this year. Back in my teens and twenties I went through some tough times when I could find no reason in myself to keep going. I had to look outside. I’m alive today because of my nieces and nephews. They were all kids back then. As someone who’d lost people in my life as a child, I knew how much it hurt. No matter how much living hurt for me then I couldn’t die because it would hurt them even more. I couldn’t do that to them. I say this because I know there are others out there who are going through what I went through then. When we’re hurting and can’t see the beauty and joy in ourselves sometimes it’s okay to let the beauty and joy of others be our safety net to support us as we rebuild and find our balance. It is good to recognize our interconnection. It’s good to remember that in hurting ourselves we hurt those who truly love us. In healing ourselves we bring joy to those who love us too.

I share my story too because it’s not over. People have good times and lousy times. Stress impacts us all and sometimes we get worn. In recent months I’ve been noticing that the combination of middle-age, a stressful career in special education in a high needs community, the political situation in the US, and the impacts of epilepsy and epilepsy treatment have all been wrapping me up and some days wearing me down.

I’m really appreciating my 2025 Happiness Project. I think it’s been key to keeping me going. I’ve noticed that I’m not angry as much. I calm quicker. I can empathize more often. I’ll be making some changes to it in April. Meditation and daily stretching seem to be becoming a regular habit that don’t need to be listed as goals anymore. I will keep doing at least 15 minutes of meditation and a few minutes of qi gong or other stretching daily, but will give myself space for some new goals. I will keep creative time as a goal. Right now I’m deciding if I might increase the amount of time I’ll commit daily. I started with 15 minutes daily, but often find myself doing more. I’ll also keep a goal of cutting out television at least two days a week.

I’ll add one or two new goals in April. I’m still deciding what those might be. Will I focus on getting out and connecting more? Maybe I should commit to singing every day? Would I like to commit to other writing projects, daily reading, or maybe something else? There are many ideas floating about. We’ll see what comes to fruition. In any case, I think I can be proud. I’ve come a long way from those days of not finding any joy in myself to seeing the many options for growing joy.

How are you growing your joy? You are worthy. Joy is there. What do you want to do to feed it and grow it and bring it to your life?

New Life

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The pandemic has provided its challenges and gifts. A lot of people seem to be looking at this past year as having been all about struggle and loss. A year that we’ll look back on with horror or at least deep sadness. I’m not so sure, at least not for myself.

Sure, there has been sadness. My Dad died last July. He was 92 years old. I miss him. I’ll always miss him. But, sadness at the passing of someone who is elderly and in the grips of dementia is always mixed. I will miss him, but I am also joyful that he could let go, move on, and no longer be held by the pain and fear that had become his life. Yeah, I got laid off. But, I got laid off from a job in Minnesota at a really unhealthy workplace where rumors, put downs, lying, and just generally disrespectful behaviors were the norm and wound up through a series of events finding myself working for a good friend on an incredible creative project and back home in Wisconsin.

It’s been a year for being open to possibilities. Last January a severe allergic reaction to a new medication for my epilepsy led to my doctor and I pursuing options beyond medications. In July I found myself at Mayo in the epilepsy monitoring unit. I started my visit on the anniversary of my Mom’s passing. I ended it a week later just after my Dad died by making the decision to honor them both by getting a vagus nerve stimulator implanted. I came back a week later and had the little device that is changing my life implanted close to my heart, reminding me of them. Now, it sends a stimulus through my vagus nerve every three minutes and, along with my medication, is controlling my seizures and making life normal again. My energy is back. It’s been months since I’ve woken up in the morning to a headache and sore tongue, and best of all my doctors and the state of Wisconsin agree that it’s safe for me to drive and live with the independence that a car provides when one lives in a small town.

A lot of people have gone on about boredom and loneliness because of the pandemic and I confess that I’ve had some moments of wanting to get out too, but mostly I have to admit I’ve appreciated this time alone. I’ve been reminded of the joy in slowness and the importance of creative space. I took guitar lesson for awhile, long enough to give me some basics to work with and to continue to teach myself. I’ve started to work on becoming an author of children’s books. Now that it’s spring I just started doing a little volunteering at Taliesin. I’ve been reading a lot more, continuing to write here, doing a little drawing too. How could I be bored or seeking something else when I am given the opportunity to find the creative space? The world runs us too fast and I am thankful that we’ve slowed down for the moment. It is sad that it took a pandemic to slow us, but I can only hope that we find some lessons about caring for our creative selves from this experience.

It’s not been all bad. It’s been a year for staying home and eating home cooking, a year for being creative, a year for relaxing and getting to know ourselves, a year for embarking on a new stage of life in so many ways. What lessons have we learned? What will we carry forth? What possibilities have we opened ourselves to? What is this new life that we are embarking on as this pandemic, hopefully, begins to draw to a close?