Happiness Wasn't What I Thought It Was

A Whispers from my Wild Soul post

Lately, I’ve been noticing something I didn’t expect:

I feel… happier.

Not the performative kind. Not the kind that shows up as a highlight reel.

Just this low, steady hum of contentment in the background of my days.

And for a while, I didn’t even realize it was happening.

But then, one morning, I was journaling, and I caught myself writing “I feel happy.”

It stopped me in my tracks.

Because I hadn’t been trying to get happier.

There was no big breakthrough moment.

No external success.

Just life, unfolding.

And that’s when I started to ask… why?

What I found wasn’t what I would’ve expected years ago.

It wasn’t more money.

It wasn’t external success.

It wasn’t anything I’d been told would lead to happiness.

It was tiny, everyday things.

Watching the birds in my yard.

Laughing with my family.

Helping someone and feeling like it mattered.

Sharing what I’ve learned—my lived truth—with others in a way that feels real.

Listening to music. Singing. Dancing.

Snuggling with my kids and fur babies (even at 4 am).

Eating something delicious that I made myself.

Reading a book I couldn’t put down.

Walking in the woods.

Being barefoot in the grass.

Getting lost in my ideas and projects.

Tending to my garden.

I know this all sounds cliche, and most of these things wouldn't make anyone’s “vision board” for success.

But I've come to realize that they are my idea of success.

They’ve quietly been creating the feeling I used to chase and could never quite catch.

It made me realize something important:

If I hadn’t stopped and asked myself what was actually making me feel good,

I might have missed it completely...

I might have kept striving, kept searching, never knowing I was already living pieces of what I’d been seeking all along.

I think this is the trap so many of us fall into.

We’re given a definition of happiness that isn’t ours, and we accept it by default.

And if the things that actually make us feel good don’t match that definition?

We don’t even recognize them as happiness.

So we keep searching.

We keep pushing.

We keep telling ourselves we’re not there yet.

But here’s what I’m learning:

To feel happy, you have to know what happiness feels like in your body.

You have to be present enough to notice it.

You have to be willing to pause and connect, and listen to that quiet inner voice that says,

“This… this right here is warming your heart.”

It’s not about chasing a finish line.

It’s about noticing what lights you up as you go.

This is what happiness looks like for me.

Yours will be different—and that’s the point.

You don’t need to copy anyone’s list.

You just need to make your own.

But please, let it be yours.

Let it come from the inside.

Because that’s the only place it was ever meant to live.

Whispers from My Wild Soul

A blog series of soul remembering, healing, and transformation

These are the quiet truths that rise up when we slow down.

Reflections from the threshold of midlife, where the old stories begin to fall away and the wild soul stirs awake.

Here, I write from the heart—about crone wisdom, spiritual awakening, and the rituals that root me to the Earth and to myself.

These whispers are an invitation to return home to your own wise, wild soul.