Say Yes to Happiness

I doubt that I can add anything new to the title line above except perhaps my own personal experience with the subject. I was born into a family where my mother and father were dealing with their own ruined lives and quite unable to parent me well. I do believe they "loved" me, but just couldn't pull themselves together enough to provide a safe, secure home for my siblings and I. All of us were removed from our birth home and placed in foster care homes thus ending my brief five years in a nuclear family.

My life as a child consisted of surviving not thriving. I had indifferent foster parents, terrible ones and one really wonderful foster mother. I lived in an institution for troubled youth at age 12 and it wasn't until age 13 that I finally found some peace in a home setting with a strong and honorable woman who believed her mission in life was to save young girls in need.

Her method was so highly valued that she was able to interview and choose which girls would come to live in her home. I remember the interview as though it were yesterday. Prickly and arrogant, with a chip on my shoulder big enough for Clint Eastwood, I entered the room prepared to be rejected. After all, what was there in me that would want anyone to love me or care about me. I answered her polite and friendly questions with monosyllabic responses. My face plastered with an angry scowl, I slumped in my chair and refused to make eye contact with her.

Dismissed, I returned to my lonely room and lying down on the bed, I remember turning to my side and beginning to cry. Because you see, there was just something about that little gray-haired lady. I believed her. I heard genuine kindness in her voice. I didn't get much of that in the Evansville Children's Home where I had spent the last six months, breaking every rule and running away monthly. In spite of my best efforts to become a juvenile delinquent, I had a gentle patient caseworker who saw something in me worth fighting for.

Somehow, she convinced Lilly Marshall (name changed to protect her privacy), to take a chance on me. I was called back into the room and told that I would be leaving with Mrs. Marshall that day and instructed to go and pack my things. Handed a suitcase, I remember returning to the dorm room I shared with three other girls and feeling excited for the first time in a very long time.

Did I show that excitement to Mrs. Marshall 30 minutes later? No. The hardened, closed-off little girl inside my defiant body wasn't going to be an easy save. The story of how she transformed that young scrawny adolescent juvenile delinquent into a woman with five years of unremitting patience, love and instruction, is a book waiting to be written.

Did I emerge from those five years perfect in every way? No. Far from it; it took years of constant work, of ongoing therapy at various times, of turning to God as a young woman, of seeking out help whenever I met an obstacle in my psyche to heal the abandoned child within. I still find her coming to the front of my soul at times and making me act in less than grown up ways! But now, at age 56, I can smile at her, and reassure her that I'm in charge and she's going to be OK, and that with God's help, with the love of friends and family, with the right attitude and love for others, we can be happy no matter what has happened to the two of us.

All around us, we see children joining gangs, killing each other on the streets, taking drugs, making such terrible choices for their lives. We see social workers fighting for them and losing the battle against a society intent upon their destruction. As a world, as a country, when our young people feel no love or hope, our world is lost. Mrs. Marshall taught me so many things that I try to share with the young people I have in theatre and in my life as a volunteer.

She told me that I was worth something but that I had to work hard to make it. She taught me that no one would ever love me as much as God and myself. As I learned to trust her word and her actions, I began to open up and she shared that learning to love other people not by words, but by deeds was what was expected of me. I learned to slowly put other people's needs in front of my own at times, especially as a young mother.

It's hard, when we're a gaping hole wanting someone to just love us. That gaping hole still exists in me at times, caused by the rejection of my parents and the subsequent harshness and cruelty of foster parents who just weren't prepared to handle an angry little broken-hearted girl.

I know now when I look at young girls and see that look on their face of fear and distrust that all they really want is for someone to have faith in them. Not all of us can be foster parents, but in each of our lives we come across children, teens, young woman and even some old women, who have never learned the lessons that Mrs. Marshall taught me. They need some mothering, some kindness, some hope that their life can be better than what it is. They're in pain and they feel defeated.

It's easy for us to offer a critical word, a harsh rejection, an angry tirade to others. It's not so easy to say yes to happiness and to reject negativity when it's directed our way. I have found that there are four easy simple things I can do to remain happy and to build up on the foundation that my dear foster mother gave me 40 years ago.

I say yes to new things and new friends whenever I can. I remain open to the fact that I can know all things and be empty unless I have learned how to love others. I worked in long-term care centers with seniors for many years. The happiest old people are the ones with lots of friends. The happiest children are the ones with lots of friends. Each end of the spectrum has learned the skill of making, keeping and cherishing people in their lives.

I say yes to what's behind the closed door when an open door shuts. We all remember hearing the Mother Superior in The Sound of Music tell Maria. "When God closes one door, He opens another." And it's just true. Whatever your religious beliefs, there is always another door to take. We have to learn to let go of defeat and loss and move onto the next door. Mourn for that loss, but then get to work somewhere else. Someone needs you and you need them.

I have also learned to slow down. We can rush to that door, but sometimes we need to just amble toward it. We need to learn to reflect, pause to be renewed, pray, meditate, sit and watch the sun come up and go down in quiet solitude. We can spend all our time looking for the perfect job, the perfect relationship, the perfect outfit, but will that make us perfectly happy? No. Sometimes we're just so darn busy, we miss the perfect moment of bliss that is waiting for us. We don't know when that fleeting moment might arrive and we miss it.

On Sunday, in our front yard, we stood as a family, talking about the pumpkins and the mums that Grandma (me) and Grandpa had just put out. The older children were preparing to get in their cars and take off. We were just saying goodbye, when our grand-daughter decided that a game of tag sounded like fun. She's three and just learning to play tag! She tagged Grandpa, who began to chase her around the trees in the front yard, and soon everyone was playing tag. Grandpa, Grandma, mom and Dad, and two giggly ecstatic little girls. The tag turned into hide and seek, and scare each other in teams. As the sun set, the sounds of laughter and love permeated through our yard and into my soul. I realized once again, that my family is my life and my love. And that I was happy in that moment.

My last key to happiness is just that. Be thankful and happy for the moments in your life that bring you joy. The world is full of sad, sad people who would rob others of their joy. Hold onto yours by giving it away, and let your light so shine that it brightens your corner of the universe.