Hello! My name is Ginger, and I am the creator behind The Happy Girl Project here in Loveland, Colorado. This project started as just a little art therapy assignment that I made up for myself. I really didn't plan on sharing it with anyone.
I have a very long-lived, traumatic history and am diagnosed with complex PTSD. I am also a mom. One day, someone asked me to tell them a happy story and, despite my decades of participation in therapy, I had none. This really shook me up. The fact that I was a mom AND that I had no happy stories to tell was unacceptable to me. As a mom, I feel very strongly that I am responsible to show my kiddos the happiness and joy in life, but how could I if I couldn't find them for myself? That is when I decided that something had to change.
That is when I decided to start creating happy images. I started creating individual images of girls and women smiling and laughing to see if I could learn to take on some of that positive energy myself. I created in hopes that I would be able to somehow rewire my brain and teach myself how to notice the light of joy in my life, rather than being stuck in my darkness all the time. It didn't work right away, but through some time and process, it did start to take effect. Just ask my husband, Cody! While I'm not 100% cured, I have made more healing progress since starting to create these images, in 2023, than I had in over twenty years of therapy!
Now, I take the images that I started to create back in 2023, and I put them into collages. I write little tidbits that I've learned from all those years of therapy, and match them with the images. My goal is to inspire and empower other girls and women.
So many of us have been through heartbreak, disappointment, abuse, and even trauma. So my challenge to each one of us is this:
Question every negative message you've been told about yourself. Don't believe our society's beauty standards. Replace the abuser's words with the truth. I don't care who you are, what you look like, or what size clothes you wear. I don't care how old you are, what you've believed about yourself, or what you've been through in life. No matter what kind of darkness you might find yourself in, there is light on the other side... Light and beauty and joy. It may take a hell of a fight to get there but, my dear, you are SO worth it!
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