Having a Happy Place and Why It's So Important!

Where is your happy place? Hopefully as soon as you read the question a physical place popped into your mind.  As I’ve been doing a lot of work on healing my body, mind and soul after the past few painful years, I’ve realized just how important it is to have a happy place.  As I’m continuing to work on myself, I am often asked to picture my happy place.  At first I kind of fought between two places, my home and my best friend’s lake house in MN.  As much as I love my home, the lake house with the sound of boats on the water and loons off in the distance is the clear winner.  It’s the place that my energy level mellows and my soul connects.  It is my happy place.

Although my happy place isn’t ‘my’ place at all, it represents everything that I love. As a kid growing up in Indiana, my grandparents had a lake house on Lake Tippecanoe (Northeast- IN ).  I would spend my summers catching frogs, fishing with a cane pole and swimming in Lake Tippy.  I celebrated most of my birthdays there and even after college would fly back to IN and spend a week with my grandparents in the lake house.  The sound of the tires hitting the gravel driveway and the smell of the lake instantly made me happy. It’s where I learned that there’s nothing better to fish with then a cane pole and melee worms (mealworms).  I also learned how to shuck corn, snap beans and the secret to making a mean strawberry shortcake.  If there was a time portal, that Indiana lake house is where I would go in a heartbeat. It was my happy place until the day my grandparents passed.

What I am learning is just how important a happy place is to us as adults as well as our kids. I love that my best friend’s daughter is also my daughter’s best friend.  I love that my daughter calls their lake house her favorite place on Earth – even more than Disney.  It’s the place that she smiles from the inside and laughs like I dream of seeing her laugh.  It’s the place that after my divorce I found my serenity and my daughter found her smile.  Having a happy place isn’t some voodoo magic, it’s about having a place that resonates with your soul and brings you back to center.  I think we all need that spot in our lives.  That place that just thinking about it makes us instantly calmer and invokes a sense of happiness.  My happy place is also the place that I will laugh until I double over, shove mojito filled water bottles in my bathing suit top and belt out an amazing version of Pour Some Sugar on Me.  Yes, the mojitos and Def Leppard usually go hand in hand, but I’ll spare you those pictures.

Xoxo Melissa