A choice to feel happy.

Originally written for New Year’s Eve, 2021

Click this link to hear me read the letter to you.

Last year, stretching back further than yesterday, I had a moment where I stood outside in my garden and heard my own voice whisper, "I'm so happy." Happy, that fleeting feeling that pops in and out, the elusive feeling we long for, write books about, create documentaries for, research and go on journeys to find.

There is a trade off for all our choices, it feels like a balancing system. For a long time I was chasing the highs and with those highs came equal amounts of the emptiness of the low. Life felt like a series of bombs that could go off at any moment, and mostly, they did.

A couple of New Years ago Dave and I broke up. This isn't something I like to talk about and yet it is part of the magical swirl of iterations. He went to NH and I sat alone in the house on New Year's Eve watching a Lady Gaga documentary in the midst of the final bomb I was willing to be inside of. I wanted my happiness back.

We went to see our therapist and tell her about our decision, I remember being so angry that I had poured so much into this relationship and Dave couldn't see it, he couldn't see me. Dave was angry, at the world, at me, mostly at himself.

Our therapist calmly listened to our explosions and she told us that we were a magical combination, that she adored us together and that we had to stop operating as though our relationship was you against me. She suggested we add in a third party, us. She said that we would often need to take turns, someone might not be calm enough to take care of 'us' but the third person in our relationship could not be ignored. She said that I was putting too much into Dave and he was not putting enough into me, and that we could get to the balance by thinking about us.

This wasn't Dave's turning point, his would come later (and it was powerfully good), but it was mine. And it would take me into this next iteration of life where I stood in my garden and knew it was the happiest I had ever felt.

It came with spending a summer making no money at all and dipping into savings to get through it. It came with knowing that social media was depleting, destructive and harmful to who I wanted to be and how I wanted to feel. It came with changing the entire model of how I work, being willing to make a whole lot less money and trust that I could make it through the change. It came from the transformation of the bombs of a love addict into the garden of a healing soul.

Dave and I spent a summer transforming a house from top to bottom, hours and hours alone together. I was so happy. The following summer he built me a fence and the garden's love story grew. I was so happy. He left a job he hated, I transformed mine so I wasn't depleted. Happy. We got a kitten. Happy. We began the de-cluttering process, happy. We worked our land together. Happy.

The pandemic swept us up and tucked us away together, a crash course on togetherness. We were operating as us. And through this, I found my happiness. The foundation for my happiness was building a life anchored by sacred roots. Those sacred roots began to add up and become stronger, dig deeper and in the silence of my hands in the earth, they grew me.

It is scary to change. I went back and forth so many times around all of it. Drinking, my relationship, how I work, social media.

If it feels like a bomb, it will be transformed into sacred roots.

I can remember that New Year's Eve, watching Gaga who was dealing with her own bomb transformations and feeling everything. I can remember Dave coming home in the New Year and sitting on the couch next to me, and our hands finding each other in our grief. I can remember choosing differently.

I can remember through the bombs, my choice to be happy.

Sending love to all your bits and pieces this Gregorian New Year.