Amy Winn – Reflections on Happiness

In two months, I turn 75. For 3/4 of that time, I lived enclosed in a hard, nearly impenetrable shell. I thought it was protecting me. Instead, it was the barrier to my discovering happiness. The shell formed to protect me from the people who adopted me and my three siblings. The woman didn’t want children. We lived in shame, silence, and despair. By the time I was in college, I had no way to let others in. It was always safest to be alone.
In this talk, I cover the moments of shell cracking such as meeting and marrying Ken Wilber and the subsequent awareness that I did have a good brain and that I was expected to use it. But the shell was stubborn and kept trying to reseal. I share the shattering of that shell, the discovery of happiness and most importantly, how I am sustaining it.
Amy has been a manager of a bookstore, a restaurant, a national barbecue society, a buyer and seller of real estate, sole owner of an organizing business, a lover of martinis, watching other people cook, a therapist and a volunteer coordinator.