Hello There!

In the late spring and early summer of 2020, like so many others, I experienced a lot of loss and deep sadness. On Thursday, March 5, 2020, my husband and I separated and a week later my City completely shut down to slow the spread of Coronavirus. Many of my friends left town and the office where I work closed — I felt really alone. 

In a previous career, I was an ER Nurse, so in early April, I rejoined the healthcare workforce and did a 10 weekend stint at an ER in Brooklyn. I definitely felt less alone working alongside some of the best Nurses and ER Techs I’d ever met. But I witnessed significant loss of human life, much of it unnecessary, and that made me very sad, too. 

I finished my time in the ER in mid-June and that’s when my mood really bottomed out. It was the cumulative effect of everything. The murder of George Floyd allowed the raw pain of an unhealed nation to gush out. I joined protests and found companionship, but was ultimately alone with a sadness that moved between hope and defeat. I couldn’t see my friends the way we used to — some of them were even afraid to see me because of my work in the ER — and the loneliness I felt in my husband’s absence, and the absence of any romantic partner was almost crippling. 

I cried my way through the rest of June and most of July. Finally, in late July, I took time off from work to focus on the sadness that had overtaken my life and see if I could do something, anything to face it. I took a course about The Science of Well-Being. I learned SO MUCH — shout out to the instructor, Professor Laurie Santos for making this course free to the public! I learned that my “signature strength” is Kindness, which entails “doing favors and good deeds for others, helping and taking care of them.” I learned that using my signature strengths could make me happier. I also learned that doing acts of kindness for others, even strangers, makes us happier and enhances our sense of social connectedness, which, even with complete strangers, offers a host of psychological and health benefits.

I kind of already knew all these things — that I’m really nice (I know, it sounds weird), that doing nice things for others makes us feel better, and that social connection is pretty important — but I hadn’t fully taken stock of how much Coronavirus had impacted these things, or my experience of them. Moreover, as I watched Dr. Santos’ lectures, I had this sense (borne of life experiences and from my most recent stint as an essential worker) that the ability to do acts of kindness or kind things for others is often afforded, literally and figuratively, by having something (money, time, energy) to give away — and not everyone has that. 

So, I created this website to feel happier by doing acts of kindness for others and enhance my feeling of social connectedness, which has changed since COVID-19 upended seemingly everything. But, hopefully, that’s not all that happens through this website. I also want other people to derive happiness by doing kind acts for others. While there are plenty of simple and free ways to do kinds acts for others (like holding the door, smiling at a stranger — this is a personal favorite that can’t be done with a mask on, unfortunately), I want to help people who want to do a specific kind act that requires financial resources they may not have, like paying your friend’s phone bill, covering your mom’s medication copay, or buying a winter jacket for someone in need.

Happiness isn’t the end all, be all, but it feels nice and we need it. I want some happiness and I want to share it with you.