Hello everyone, and welcome to Speaking with Joy, a podcast to fill your soul, challenge your mind, and make you brave.

I'm your host, Joy Clarkson, and an evangelist for all things good, true, and beautiful.

So make yourself a cup of tea, find somewhere comfortable, and let's dive in to this week's episode. He was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to my aggressively happy podcast. That's quite a way to

open it an aggressively happy podcast. We are exploring the themes in my book, aggressively happy,

A Realist Guide to Believing in the Goodness of Life. And this week I get to talk to one of the

people who has been my greatest, I do not

think that is the exaggeration, mentor and cultivating joy in this weary old world. And that is my

lovely mother, Sally Clarkson. Welcome to the show. I am so honored to be able to be with you

today. Well, I'm excited to talk with you about this theme.

In the chapter itself, I talked a little bit about how I've always felt like a bit of a sensitive soul.

I don't think people always notice that on the outside because I'm, you know, extroverted and gregarious,

but that I've

always felt like I kind of had a thin walls to my soul so that the joy and the delight and the

color and the vibrancy of life slipped through, but so did kind of the feelings of the darkness

and difficulties of the world. And something that has always meant a lot to me is I think that

we are in some ways quite alike.

And you have been someone who has taught me how to, not just taught me how to, but been with me through the seas of sorrow.

And I think that's so important is finding people who can be with you.

So there was no one better that I wanted to talk to you about this.

And this year, you just wrote a book kind of on this theme.

Can you tell everybody a little bit about that?

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