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.