The Stories Of Us: Laurie Haller

What's Your Legacy?

This is a question I've been pondering a lot lately - with everything going on around us, living in the modern wold can feel like we are being stretched in so many (often competing) directions. When I want to ground myself and come back to my core values, I consider my legacy. What is it, why it matters to me, and how can I spread this beautiful message far and wide.

To celebrate the launch of our Legacy Locket - a beautiful keepsake necklace that is the result of nearly two years of work - I reached out to some incredible people in my sphere to share their legacies with you.

In honor of the stories that make us, I will also be donating a portion of our sales to each of these Legacy heroes' chosen causes to continue to pay it forward.

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My name is Laurie Haller. I am 45 years old, living in Los Angeles, with my husband and our three kids - ranging in age from 5 to 14. For as long as I can recall I believed being a mother would be my legacy. Is is, after all, important work nurturing the next generation. And yet, I became a mother and to my surprise, I felt utterly abandoned by the world of misconceptions I had blindly bet my happiness on, moving my entire young adult life towards that one coveted title I was certain would fix me.

If I'm being honest, I didn't find "my life's work," on the other side of pregnancy. It was immediately obvious I wasn't cut for the job. Fourteen years later I laugh that no one tells you how much parenting is meeting the incessant, daily, unrelenting physical and emotional needs of irrational small people, that lasts for decades. I am not a cook, and I don't like to leave the house very often. This pretty much makes me the worst possible candidate for motherhood, with three children in club sports.

And so began the journey to answer the familiar question, "Now what?" But this time I was a little mad, like discovering the man behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz. If not the husband and the children and the white picket fence, then what on earth was I missing?

I dove into the meaning of life, ferociously reading, writing, watching and listening. I picked up every book, watched every documentary, and eventually, I began to see the forest through the trees. And while our happiness, inner peace and satisfaction ratings are indeed personalized, the word that jumped off the page that was undeniably universally-shared was, intention.

To live with intention. To think, to move and to breathe with intention.

I define intention as the net sum of awareness and action. When we become aware of our own selves, our own belief system and realities, when we become aware of the universal laws governing this live experience, and we combine all of that focused attention with action, life becomes the great gift we were promised it to be. Back when we thought making children was the path.

The action is small. The action is daily.

...and thus the one-mile was born.

I have walked (or jogged) one simple mile every day since September 24th, 2023 to demonstrate the kind of happiness that arises from small intentional action. Rain, shine, home and away, in sickness and in health, I have not missed a single day.

Our deepest peace doesn't come from material consumption, success,, or packaged in affection of other people, not in any sustained manner anyway. It is bound on a deeply personal relationship with our own considered life experience. It lies within the one-miles, within the mind, the body and the spiritual action we embed into our daily cooking, cleaning, carpooling unconscious lives. It is the way in which we follow our joy. It is a purpose of plans. It is measures by how deliberate we are.

In those early days of surprise-depression, living abroad in London, with my husband and our baby bow I thought life was individualized and random, until I studies it. I quickly learned there was nothing unique about me and my quest for answers. The human experience is shared, quite predictably.

I have since become a licensed life coach and have penned my first book (forthcoming). I went on to have two more children. I have buried my best friend, have rebuilt my marriage from the ground up, and I have recently grieved the loss of our family home in the Palisades Fire. Life doesn't ever stop being life. But living in faith and with a trust in all the ways it supports us unwaverinly, has allowed me to find peace and joy in the midst of all that squeezed the heart.

They say, "Your kids don't need a perfect mother, they need a happy one." I'll take that one step further. "You don't need a perfect life, you need a happy one."

And what is my legacy. Happiness.

So walk to miles, buy the jewelry, connect with others. Study life. Follow your joy. Live with intention. And then tuck something of value inside of your locket. You'll find my husband and our three beautiful children inside of mine.

I am sharing my legacy in support of an organization dear to my heart: Baby2Baby - on the front lines of the LA fire relief effort, disaster areas all over the world alongside their mission of meeting the needs of children across the USA.

Laurie Haller is the creator of Life Designed Happy, Life Coach and writer. Connect with her @lifedesignedhappy