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Dear Friends, This week I (Mandy) babysat my grandson, six months old Denny. Denny is a happy baby – he smiles and belly laughs constantly. He loves silly songs and stories and anything with anticipation. For instance, he loves stories like “This little piggy…”.  His happiness makes me happy. I began to think about smiling […]

Dear Friends, Happy Belated Mother’s Day to all the moms and grandmothers out there! Here is a lovely photo Jill Galloway Sherman sent us of her beautiful daughter:  Spring walk with my girl makes my day. Speaking of motherhood, this week we saw an interesting article about teaching children the importance of generosity in contrast

Dear friends, This week we are celebrating the one year anniversary of SeeingHappy. Thank you to each and every one of you for sharing your happy photos and for helping us build such an extraordinary community.   In cause of celebration, we are spotlighting the first photo to ever be posted on our site from May

Hi friends, When you submit photos to SeeingHappy.org, do you ever wish you had an easier way to upload photos straight from your phone? Well, with the new SeeingHappy app you can do just that: Over the span of the past week, we have launched our first ever mobile app onto the Apple App store

Dear Friends, We love this photo from Bob Turner – people of all ages focused on the same view: Never did learn what these folks were focused upon. Love walking around with my camera finding shooting opportunities such as this one! This week we wanted to draw your attention to a brilliant new book by

Dear Friends, We love this photo by Ellen Rosenberg – it exemplifies what we want to tell you about this week: The magic of bubbles… translucent, connecting, childhood memories, magical… mimicking joy in our lives. When you look back to your childhood and about the joy of creating bubbles or playing on a playground, how does

Dear Friends, When you turn on the television or open your laptop there is much to worry about. The world is a troubled place. The news is filled with images and stories that horrify us. It certainly is hard to digest on a daily basis. Fortunately, most of us do not live in a war

Dear Friends, This week we would like to tell you about an article in The Atlantic by our favorite contributor, Arthur Brooks: In this article, Arthur argues that “just like exercise and sleep, engaging with the arts is a necessity for a full and happy life”.  According to Arthur “two-thirds of U.S. adults say the arts ‘lift

Dear Friends, This week we would like to spotlight a photo from the World Happiness Summit— thank you Teresa Burns! We agree with Teresa— we met so many amazing people and wonderful speakers. We have so much exciting news to share with our SeeingHappy community and will do so in the coming weeks and months. Attending WOHASU

Dear Friends Last week spotlighted a very special photo that came to us from Oksana in Ukraine. Oksana has sent us more photos which we would like to share with you this week:  Refugees in Lviv (Ukraine) from Kharkiv. Kharkiv is a city in Ukraine, almost totally destroyed by Russian army during last 18 days

Dear Friends This week we want to spotlight a very special photo that comes to us from Ukraine. Oksana writes “Snowdrops in the yard are growing despite the snow….. like Ukrainian people”. Snowdrops in the yard are growing despite the snow… Thank you Oksana for sharing with us a glimmer of hope despite being surrounded

Dear Friends, This week we are sharing with you a video from BBC which explains the idea of Ubuntu. Ubuntu is an African philosophy which has its roots from the Nguni word of what it means to be human. It represents the idea of humans’ interrelatedness with each other and with our planet: “I am

Dear Friends Last week we talked about the importance of having good close connections to strengthen resilience (through family, friends, and community) when things go wrong. We also talked about how to be there for those we rely on – how to be a better listener and supporter. In keeping with this theme we want

Dear Friends As you know, the theme of the World Happiness Summit this year is resilience. So, what is resilience?  According to the Oxford dictionary, resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties and the ability to get back up when you fall down. Where does resilience come from? Can you build it? There

Dear Friends, Last week we announced our collaboration with WOHASU – the World Happiness Summit – in preparation for their conference in March. WOHASU’s theme this year is Resilience which seems particularly timely given that we may finally be moving towards a post pandemic life. As we begin to traverse this new reality, you may be thinking some of

Dear Friends, We are excited to announce that next month we will be participating in the World Happiness Summit, an event produced by the WOHASU organization. The event will be taking place March 18th-20th at the University of Miami in Miami, FL and the theme of this year’s summit is Resilience.  WOHASU is run by a

Dear Friends, At the beginning of  this month we asked for photographs that make you think the world is a beautiful and good place. It seems fitting to highlight this stunning photograph by Charles Andaloro to celebrate just what we find when we look for beauty in our world: “Photographed this beautiful bird grooming itself.”

Dear Friends, This week we would like to highlight four photos that come with beautiful stories: When I look at this ornament, I remember those few hot summer days in Paris and how happy I was when I flew by plane for the first time. That was the moment when I realized that I want

Dear Friends, Last week we asked you this month to pay attention to what makes you think the world is a beautiful and good place, to what makes you happy to get out of your cosy bed and head into the day. We asked you to send us a photograph and let us all share

Happy New Year to all of you and thank you for supporting us in our first year! As we begin the new year, let’s take a moment to remember an American comic icon who died just short of her 100th birthday– Betty White. Betty’s advice to all of us was, when possible, not to take

Dear Friends, New Year’s Day is no doubt a time of celebration, excitement, and anticipation. With the year coming to an end, we here at SeeingHappy can’t help but smile when looking at the beautiful archive of happy-photos that you all have documented. Thank you to everyone for being an inspiration! Today, we are excited

Dear Friends, Happy Holidays to all our subscribers! We first want to take account Bob’s jovial spirit as he wished everyone in our community a happy holiday season through one of his photo submissions: A few weeks ago we promised to highlight the communities within the SeeingHappy community and we are finally making good on

Dear Friends, Last week we asked you to send us photographs of objects that are meaningful to you and Cathy Newman sent us a beautiful photograph of her late father’s camera and lenses. This week we are going to talk about photography so it seems the ideal photo to spotlight: It was about a year

Dear Friends There are many reasons why photography is a special artform. One is the fact that we can use photographs to capture, document and remember the people, places, moments and objects that are meaningful to us.  Indeed, we naturally seek meaning. What’s more, we naturally strive to make meaning out of our surroundings and

Dear Friends, This week we are making good on our promise to highlight the communities within SeeingHappy. We are spotlighting a photo composite by Mandy Seligman and Jill Sherman titled “Hope” and the writing of Louisa, a teenager from Graz, Austria. It is an example of the power of art to connect people across time

Dear Friends, Take a look around your house, apartment, or dorm room, and look at the photographs you have on display. Now think of your friends, relatives, anyone, and reflect upon what types of photos that they have in their homes. We bet that there are a lot of family photos, especially photos of children

Dear Friends, This week’s spotlight is sure to touch everyone’s heart – we could not resist this gorgeous pup. Thank you so much to Bryah Rose for sending us the snap. Thanksgiving is just around the corner for those of us here in the US. Last year Covid kept so many families and friends apart

Dear Friends, This month we talked about awe. What could possibly be more awe inspiring than the birth of a child? So this week we are spotlighting a photo taken by Mandy Seligman of her newborn grandson being held by his dad. The baby is so new that dad still has his hospital id band

Dear Friends, This week we are spotlighting two photos because they look so good together although we love each photo separately: In continuing with our outdoor theme of the month, we thought this article might interest our readers: Why Outdoor Workouts May Be Better for You by Lisa MonroeBlue Zones It explains the myriad ways

Dear Friends, This month we talked about the benefits of being in green spaces and asked for photos of the great outdoors. We advocated taking awe walks. However, looking at the photo submissions to SeeingHappy you will notice that many photos include water – the sea, the beach, etc, and at least one of us