Happiness and Joy in Turbulent Times – Marissa La Brecque

Get in flow: Prioritize activities that defy distraction. This is what allows you to shake the energetic Etch-A-Sketch and refresh. This is also where your genius lives. The ideas that chatgpt could never come up with are born in the flow state.

It sometimes feels like it is so hard to avoid feeling down or depressed these days. Between the sad news coming from world headlines, and the constant negative messages popping up on social and traditional media, it sometimes feels like the entire world is pulling you down. What do you do to feel happiness and joy during these troubled and turbulent times? In this interview series called “Finding Happiness and Joy During Turbulent Times” we are talking to experts, authors, and mental health professionals who share lessons from their research or experience about “How To Find Happiness and Joy During Troubled & Turbulent Times”.

As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Marissa La Brecque.

Marissa leads Research & Training at Hanna Center, overseeing programs that address trauma through research, workforce development, and community partnerships. She is the author of four books and co-founder of a national trade organization.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?

Thank you for having me! I grew up in Sonoma County, in northern California’s wine country. My great-grandfather arrived here from Italy in 1921 and our family has pretty much stayed put since then. My father ran our family business, a food distribution company, so I spent a lot of my childhood running around the warehouse, climbing on forklifts, and eating out-of-date snacks.

What or who inspired you to pursue your career? We’d love to hear the story.

My career has had so many twists and turns but I always make sure that I am meeting three core needs: I need to be writing (my first and forever love), I need to feel I am contributing positively, and I need to be challenged. As long as those things are in play, I find work satisfying and meaningful. Over the last twenty years I have run a USDA-inspected meat plant, written four books, founded a trade organization, written plays, advocated for local food systems all across the country, built a marketing agency, and opened a yoga studio. Knowing that those core needs are what really make work satisfying and joyful for me has allowed me to be more open to opportunities that didn’t necessarily fit the expected trajectory.