About Angela Reiner

When I was seven, my mother woke me before sunrise on Sundays to volunteer at the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa's organization, in Singapore.

Even in the midst of great suffering, people found ways to feel lightness and joy. A woman named Annie didn't speak my language, but she became like a grandmother to me.

I gave her smiley face slippers for Christmas, and everyone in the room wanted to try them on. Annie had to hide them under her pillow so no one would take them. She taught me that joy can exist even in the face of suffering.

Then in 2020, I became a mother and lost my own mother in the same year, during one of the most isolating times any of us had ever known. My daughter was born into a world that felt uncertain, and I was still learning how to be a mother myself when I lost mine.

I share this because it is important to my work. I have not studied flourishing from a distance. I have needed these lessons during the hardest seasons of my own life. I practiced hope when it seemed impossible. I found my way back to joy, not because life got easier, but because the tools I had learned really do work.

I’ve spent my life studying what it means to truly flourish.