“Keep well, keep smiling.” That was how my “Nana Ruthie” signed every letter or note she penned to her family, friends, and business associates. As a positive psychology practitioner, or, more simply, a “happiness and wellbeing coach,” I’ve always wondered how my grandmother came to embrace such an encouraging and hopeful mindset.
My grandmother’s story is truly one of resilience, courage, and perseverance. And it’s also a good example of how to create a good life and focus on becoming happier whenever possible.
In Ruth’s 106+ years of living (believe it or not, the photo below was taken on her 100th birthday!), she endured many more difficult times than pleasurable ones. She grew up poor in Worcester, Massachusetts, and left home at the age of 16 to seek employment as a salesgirl, only to face an antisemitic society, repeated rejection and frustration. She eventually met and married my grandfather, who also kept losing his jobs when employers found out he too was Jewish. In order to make a living, Ruth changed her married surname to one that was more Anglicized. Despite their continuing financial struggles, and having to move around to different cities and apartments (often in the middle of the night) throughout Massachusetts to Pennsylvania to New York, my grandparents managed to raise three children, all while surviving the pandemic of 1918, living through two World Wars, as well as the Great Depression.
“Nana Ruthie” on her 100th Birthday
Family lore has passed along the “secret” that Ruth was hospitalized for depression after repeated miscarriages, and had taken in the “love child” of her sister who became pregnant when her husband was away fighting in the war. Regardless of her parental responsibilities, Ruth always worked outside the home, and ultimately launched her own fashion buying office. She “went to business” everyday for many years, and her self-made success sustained her and my grandfather financially until they retired and moved to California in their mid 70’s. She ended up taking care of my grandfather who suffered from Parkinson’s disease, and survived the loss of two of her children and three of her grandchildren before she finally passed away at a ripe old age.
What I remember most vividly about my grandmother was her constant cheerfulness and positive attitude. Nothing seemed to faze her. She loved to sing and dance, especially to her favorite tunes that my grandfather played on his piano. She gave me fashion advice, and taught me to “cream my face upwards with Oil of Olay” to keep my skin smooth and supple like hers. She always moved ahead with purpose — quite literally at a “New Yorker’s pace” — to the point where even as a young adult I couldn’t keep up with her. In her retirement, she swam everyday, sat in the sauna, played Bridge (until all of the “old ladies” in her card game died), and ate strawberry ice cream after dinner.
Ruth never meditated or practiced yoga, had the opportunity to sit on a therapist’s couch, or to journal her thoughts and feelings, and she didn’t read self-help books. But she instinctively knew how to find happiness and focus on the good in her life, in spite of all of her setbacks, sacrifices, and struggles. She seemed to have been gifted with the “secret” of life — one that positive psychologists and happiness researchers have been discovering — to “keep well, keep smiling.”