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What Is Soul-Happy? Reclaiming What Was Never Lost

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To my inner circle,

People often ask me about the title of my memoir and what it actually means to be soul-happy.

For years, I didn’t have a clean definition for it. But sometimes an experience takes root in early life that only reveals its full potency decades down the road.

Growing up in Denmark, I was never particularly close to Farmor, my paternal grandmother. She was married to a man twenty-five years her senior, widowed at a young age, and raised four children on her own by working multiple labor-intensive jobs from sunrise to sundown. When she finally retired, she wasn’t the doting type; she was independent, reserved, and showed up mostly for birthdays, Christmas, and occasional visits.

When I was in my early teens, I visited Farmor with my father while she was wheelchair-bound from a broken hip. She was in acute physical pain and facing the terrifying uncertainty of whether she would ever regain mobility. She cried her woes openly to my dad.

Then, in a single breath, her tone shifted completely. She pointed toward the window of that crammed living room.

Listen! The birdies are singing! How wonderful. Their little voices brighten my day. I have so much to be thankful for. Those little creatures are singing for me!

Farmor chuckled through her tears, wiping wetness from her cheek as genuine joy settled across her face.

In that moment, she demonstrated something radical: even in the middle of pain and great uncertainty, joy is accessible. Not because circumstances are easy, but because we choose to notice the richness of life and the divine fabric we are part of.

Years later, when physical collapse and chronic illness brought my own life to a standstill, Farmor’s example returned to me. It wasn’t theory. I knew firsthand that joy wasn’t something you waited for circumstances to grant you.

Being soul-happy is our birthright

Young children under the age of six inhabit this state naturally. They are curious, smitten with life, and unconcerned with constructing a contrived image for the world. In the exact same way an elephant or a daffodil simply expresses its nature, young children flow effortlessly between hurt, laughter, tears, and excitement. They are simply being themselves.

Most of us lose touch with this state in our teens or early adulthood when we trade our inner truth for a constructed cover story. We start living from the noise in our heads rather than the alignment of our hearts.

Soul-happy is not toxic positivity

It is not forced optimism or pretending that pain doesn’t exist.

It is the grounded, internal operating system that knows all is well because we are deeply connected to our true self and to the universe. It is a deliberate choice to drop the performance, step out of the beige numbness, and return to the vitality that has been waiting for us all along.

We do not have to invent who we are. We simply have to remember.

With love and gratitude,
Anette

Order Soul-Happy: A Viking Woman’s Long Road Home