Smiles and Laughter: @TheBloggess Wants You to Be Furiously Happy

giving back • my world • moms making a difference • moms making a difference

by Mom It Forward on August 3rd, 2011 | 4 Comments »

Happiness—A Mom Making a Difference, for purposes of this column, is technically defined as someone who has at least one child, one childbirth-related stretch mark, and a mission that helps others, primarily but not exclusively in the realm of social media, and something that shows she is taking action to accomplish that mission. Some Moms Making a Difference do so in big, obvious ways, like Jill Savage of Hearts-at-Home, or Elisa Morgan of MOPS. Some make a difference in "smaller" ways, with "just" a book or a blog. So many bloggers we meet have such big spirits and are so fun and interesting to be around or read. If that were the only criteria for being featured here, we would never run out of women to feature. However, we do have to narrow it down somewhat.

Jenny Lawson's spirit, if you judge it only by Evo '11 Ignite Talk (below), is huge. Gargantuan even. You cannot help but smile, laugh, then drop to the floor in happy tears as you listen to her. In less than five minutes, she had audience members attacking each other, literally, crying, and then totally inspired to be "furiously happy." She staged a mass zombie attack, then shared examples of massively silly things she's done in her life in pursuit of "feeling the moment." The story of how her acquisition of a ridiculous grinning stuffed boar's head turned into the fulfillment of complete strangers' Christmas wish lists is classic.

Similarly, her blog, TheBloggess.com, is "like Mother Teresa, only better." The blog is "inexplicably popular and has been featured on everything from Forbes to MSNBC (all for ridiculous reasons)." She shares no tips on being furiously happy, just stories. And an invitation to pursue it now, not when we recover from whatever challenge or debilitation we're currently suffering. She pursues happiness vehemently in her own life, despite debilitating arthritis, anxiety, depression, and multiple miscarriages. Her most salient point was that we should pursue being furiously happy because we deserve the right to it.

Be silly. Jump. Do cartwheels. Play tag. Make yourself happy, because it feels good and it cannot help but make those around you happy. Because we actually can make a difference for them by being happy.