As my Year of Generosity comes to a close, the most important lesson I learned this year is not the one I thought I would learn.

One thing I’ve realized during this Year of Generosity is that it is much easier to feel and be generous when you stay connected to gratitude.

It feels grandiose to say that writing my book is an act of generosity. But, in the technical sense, you could reasonably call it a gift.

I have a friend who has a problem with giving. Every month, when she and her spouse allot personal “fun money” for each of them, my friend immediately donates almost all of hers to various community causes. What’s the problem? you may ask. That’s so generous!

When I was a kid, I had a little combination safe with a red spin dial where I hid away all the cash I’d received from my allowance, birthday gifts, and odd jobs. I was a saver, not a spender, but there was one thing I wanted to do with the money: give it to my parents.

When I started my “Weekly Gifts” at the beginning of this year to help explore this year’s theme of generosity, I had intended to give money, or at least to spend money on gifts. But, then life happened: my husband got laid off, a sizable medical bill, a fender bender, and near empty business coffers because of my time spent book-writing.

“Take a plant. Leave a plant.” In true Portland whimsy, a line of plant starts sat in dixie cups in a little greenhouse that appeared on the sidewalk near my office. A note encouraged people to take a plant, let it grow, and return with the offshoots it created. I grabbed a baby spider plant and skipped home, delighting in my good fortune and in this little piece of creative community.

The Buddha begged for his meals. He wandered from village to village asking for alms, as was the traditional monastic practice, and strangers placed food in one his few possessions, his begging bowl. How many of us, particularly us mothers, would feel comfortable asking for this kind of help on a daily basis?

This month, in keeping with this year's theme of Generosity, I have something really exciting to share with you—but first, a little story:

A Vietnam War veteran once told me about when he was out in the jungle and came upon a herd of elephants. He watched as all the mother elephants got into a big circle to protect the babies in the middle. As he told me this story, his eyes reddened and he said,

"The thing I wanted more than anything in the world was to be in the center of that circle."

Because I’ve devoted this year to exploring Generosity, I’ve begun to really dig in on some of my emotional hang-ups around money, and I recently did so at a retreat led by my old therapist called “Women and Our Wealth.” On the last day, even after a weekend devoted to unpacking internal money obstacles, I was still struggling with generosity.

I shared with the group that I wanted to be more generous and I had a sense that I should, but that I still felt scared, stingy, and resentful of people who had more than me.

My old therapist, who despite the fact that we hadn’t worked together in five years, could still read me like a book, asked: “Do you know what the Brahmaviharas are?”

After spending dozens of hours over the last month talking with you, my community, about money, wealth, and what is enough for the Prosperity Project, I am more convinced than ever that prosperity is a state of mind.

I spoke with women who have net worths over a million dollars and others who watch their bank balance hover just above zero, all of whom deal with a sense of lack. I found that, regardless of dollar amounts, the feeling of not having enough is almost always rooted in a sense of not being enough.

Happy 2024, ya’ll! So, my theme of the year is Generosity.

I chose to work with Generosity this year because there were some patterns in myself I didn’t particularly like. I noticed, for example, last summer I’d get all prickly inside when my kid’s friend came over and, during snack time, ate nearly the entire box of raspberries I just bought.

I mean, sure that’s annoying. But, my reaction was more than just annoyed. I felt indignant. Like, angry. With a seven-year-old. Inside, I was Gollum, wanting to snatch the raspberries off the table and hide in the basement, wrapped around my precious fruit, elbows pointed out, snarling at anyone who looks my way.

Not my proudest moment.

Last month, during a writing incubator program, my fellow writers and I were asked to name, draw a picture of, and describe our inner critics. Clearly, this exercise was meant to identify the part of ourselves that judged our creative work, but the only thing I could think about was the inner voice that criticizes my mothering.

I named her Bethilzda. I described her as an old witch, draped in black, hissing in my ear, “You’re fucking it up. Your daughter’s going to hate you. ”

I am three weeks into a four-week “digital fast,” in which I stay completely off social media and refrain from consuming all audio and video streaming content, with few exceptions. (For all you sticklers, I’ve allowed myself music, exercise videos, and one hour a week to watch TV with my family.) This is my third such break from digital consumption I’ve taken this year. And it’s really helped me connect with my 2023 theme of Truth.

I was inspired to try this digital detox after returning from a week-long meditation retreat in late 2022. Before then, reducing screen time was something I felt like I should do. As I zoned out on TikTok, there was always this voice chattering in my head saying, You know, this isn’t good for you. You really should pay more attention to your kid. You’re wasting your time by lining tech bro pockets.

“I feel like I just drank forty ounces of bacon grease,” a client said to me the other day near the end of our session.

I laughed. “What does that mean?” I asked.

“Well, this belief coming out of me, one way or the other.”

We’d spent the session talking about how she longed to live bigger into what she felt called to do in the world, but she feared letting her full self be seen. She worried about what others—her family, friends, neighbors—would think of her. We identified a belief that was operating under the surface, (the one she later said was bound to come out): Hiding my whole, true self keeps me safe and loved. It’s a belief that is familiar to many of us.

One morning, on one of this summer’s family camping trips, my seven-year-old, still in her sleeping bag, hit me with this one: “Mom, if this pillow is giant to an ant, but small to whale, what size is it really?”

Boom. She is definitely the child of a philosopher. (Also, she’s been loving this kid’s book on philosophy that I got her from the library, so maybe she was inspired.)

My kiddo’s question was about “epistemic relativism,” a ten-dollar philosophy phrase meaning that the world looks—and thus, perhaps, actually is— radically different from one person (or animal) to the next. In other words, it raises the question of whether there is any objective truth about reality at all.

Well, my Year of 40 is officially over! I had so many wonderful conversations with y’all about how to live deeply into our wild and precious lives. Thank you so much for sharing your stories with me.

And now, I am going to be 41 in a few days. (Time just keeps moving, doesn’t it?) One nice thing about a summer birthday it is that it offers a natural mid-year reflection point.

I’m doing 1000 days of meditation. I started this past February, sort of on a whim, and told myself I would meditate 10 minutes a day, everyday. I had the sense that such a project would be appropriate for my 2023 theme of Truth, but it is only recently that I’ve started to see how.

Meditation can sometimes feel a little silly and pointless. Essentially, you aim to sit quietly and bring awareness to your breath, body, and/or mind with curiosity, openness, and equanimity.

Of course, on most of the 120 days I’ve meditated so far, (yes, I’ve missed one, but just one), I spend my daily ten minutes shuffling through to-do lists, regretting something snarky I said to a friend, doom-casting about the end times, or daydreaming about what to make for dinner. If I’m lucky, at some point, I remember that I’m supposed to be meditating, and try to refocus…until I wander off again.

“The thing I hate about Mother’s Day is that it just feels so fundamentally untrue,” said one of the mothers in this month’s Meaning of Motherhood Discussion Circle. Mother’s Day flattens motherhood, she continued, claiming that we’re “superheroes” and the best way to honor us is with a bouquet and brunch.

Modern Mother’s Day, with its saccharine greeting cards, ignores the way in which we, as a a society, have isolated, abandoned, and devalued mothers while also depending on them to meet everyone’s needs.

But this is not always how Mother’s Day was.

“No, that’s not true.” I say this to myself a lot right now, particularly as we approach Earth Day.

I taught logic courses in college classrooms for many years, so I know that a statement can have one of three true-values: true, false, or unknown. Many of us get into a lot of trouble when we confuse unknown statements for true ones—something I am inclined to do when I think about the state of the planet. I convince myself that the earth my hypothetical grandchildren will inhabit will be nothing but blackened wastelands, waterworlds, underground mole people fighting resource wars in Mad Max style.

At a conference panel I attended this past weekend, a group of women writers were discussing what happens to women who tell the truth about their lives. After publishing their books, these writers were asked, often in a scandalized tone: What do your children/parents/colleagues think? They noted that their male counterparts rarely seemed to be asked this question.

One panelist, memoirist Rebecca Woolf, was reflecting on how, as a little girl, she was given a diary with a padlock on it, as were many of her friends—as, I noted in the audience, was I. “When I was younger,” Woolf said, “I assumed that the padlock was there to protect me. But now I realize that the padlock was really there to protect everyone else.”

Seven years ago, I spent Valentine’s Day in a psych ward with postpartum psychosis. As I sat on a hard plastic chair against the psych hospital’s cinderblock wall, one of the other patients approached and said “Happy Valentine’s Day” as he handed me a piece of paper. On it, was a drawing of a flower he’d made with crayons.

At least, I think that’s what happened.

Each new year, I choose a word that will serve as my theme for the year—something that I want to work with, explore, cultivate, both personally and professionally. My word for 2022 was “Gratitude,” and I learned a lot about how to feel more grateful. This year, I want to explore a rather different kind of word.

My word for 2023 is (drumroll please…)

I’ve read or listened to 44 books so far in 2022! Here’s a little drawing I made where I’ve been keeping track of this year’s reading list. (A few blank ones at the end, in case I finish any more.)

Here my top five; these are the ones that have stayed with me, that I draw upon again and again:

My year of Gratitude is coming to a close. I started this year recoiling from the word “gratitude.” It made me feel selfish, ashamed, and annoyed. It felt like the people who focused on it were holier-than-thou, naïve, or, at best, insincere. But I chose the word because I felt like if I didn’t learn to become more grateful, I’d continue feeling empty and unworthy, no matter how much success I achieved or things I got.

I was starting to get worried that the end of the year was approaching, and I hadn’t shifted all that much on this year’s theme of “Gratitude.” Thanksgiving would fall flat again this year. Sure, I’d thought about gratitude as a concept a lot, felt little glimmers here and there, but ultimately, I still felt like my life was full of unending to-do lists and piles of laundry.

One thing I’ve been wrestling with in working with my theme of Gratitude this year is what you might call the “Pollyanna factor”: gratitude is a syrupy sweet, simple-minded or even damaging version of toxic positivity. “Just smile and look on the bright side,” (she says through gritted teeth).

But, of course, the world has many ills that need real attention. People are suffering, and it feels like the engaged and empathic thing to do is to suffer greatly along with them, not list our blessings.

In the month before my 40th birthday, I ran a little experiment to see if a daily gratitude practice would help me get out of a funk. Maybe it was the 2-Year Pandemic blues, but this past March, a heaviness settled on me and lingered there. With the weight of war, mass shootings, Supreme Court rulings, and record high heat, I felt lonely and depressed.

You never know how close you are to something terrible happening. That was the feeling my client struggled with for a long time after enduring life-threatening experiences in her childhood. And, while she’d worked through a lot of her anger and anxiety, she was still struggling with accessing joy.

Spring has come to Portland, (despite yesterday’s weird spring snow). As the blooming flowers and warm weather returns, I can’t help but feel a twinge of fear at the coming summer. What used to be anticipation of sprinklers, popsicles, and backyard barbecues is now bracing for wildfire smoke, heat domes, and gunshots ringing through the city nights.

Some days, it seems absurd to continue to turn toward my 2022 theme of gratitude.