From “Dreaming” to “Doing”: The Life Book of an AuDHDer | HappyPower Wlog

mia
Apr 11
8 min read

Hi, hello, I’m Mia.

This is my first personal article within HappyPower, and also a piece that has been delayed and brewed for half a year. During this time, I did many things together with my partners at HappyPower. I went through many failures, setbacks, and growth, and finally turned these thoughts that I have been repeatedly reflecting on into written words.

Over the past six months, I have gone through a profound process of personal clearing, transformation, and integration.

I shifted from being a detached observer and researcher to becoming a hands-on beginner explorer;

I transformed from a deep-sea fish in the mental world into someone who stands firmly on the ground of reality.

To me, HappyPower is a real-world prototype of the ideal world I once imagined; it is my testing ground in reality; it is a giant vessel carrying me through storms as I explore; it is a doorway through which I step into the real world.

The story begins with a funeral.

At that time, I was four years old, and my great-grandmother was ninety-nine.

She loved bright-colored flowers when she was alive, so everyone wore bright flowers to say goodbye to her, calling it a “celebratory funeral.”

Back then, I didn’t understand death, let alone the idea of a “celebratory funeral.” I only saw sorrow quietly flowing among my family members, and I thought, I would probably never again be able to eat the dishes my great-grandmother cooked with her own hands.

I repeatedly revisited and tried to depict the few memories I had with her, but memory is always like a handful of sand—slowly yet inevitably falling along the trajectory of time, then compressed layer by layer by the gravity of life, turning into the rings of history, the ground beneath our feet, and a book that can no longer be opened.

This was a feeling I struggled to describe for many years. But I realized that I, too, would eventually become a handful of sand, a lump of earth in the long river of time. If that is the case, then why do we live this life?

What is the meaning of life? I asked. I began to ask myself, ask others, ask the world—why do humans live?

The Oxford Very Short Introduction The Meaning of Life says: life has no inherent meaning; it is something you must create.

If that is true, then what should I create?

“This year, as I recalled my great-grandmother’s passing, what emerged in my writing was a whale fall.”

02. The Cage of Life

Regarding the meaning of life, I have asked many people. I wanted to hear their views on their own lives, and then see what advice they might have for me.

Yet for a long time, I never received a clear answer. It was as if this had never been a question that needed to be answered.

Still, I began to see many things—I saw the traces of life flowing, saw the connections between people, and saw how the energy of life flows across generations.

At the same time, I also saw how pain is passed down through generations.

I saw how psychological pain carves trenches in the mind, erects barriers, and weaves itself into cages;

I saw generations of people trapped in similar cages, searching their entire lives without finding an exit;

I saw countless people connected head to tail, circling endlessly around the obelisk of the mental world—certain rules, orders, and beliefs—yet no one knows why.

In that moment, I was struck by an immense, indescribable feeling. — Many years later, I came to understand that it was a kind of “sorrow of the century.”

I began to study psychology on my own, because at that time, in my eyes: all suffering arises from the mind, and thus should be treated with methods of the mind.

That same year, Avatar was released, and it shaped my earliest vision of an ideal world—one of interconnectedness and boundless love.

03. The Light of Life

Abundance, love, and connection My mind often presents me with this kind of image: every person’s body is filled with either golden or gray-black energy. This energy flows out from each person’s heart and the top of their head, weaving people together into a vast web of light. For my younger self, everything was simplified into a very straightforward logic—as long as I used the beautiful golden “light of life” to purify the gray-black sorrow, pain, and fear, the world would return to the beautiful vision depicted in Avatar, and I would no longer feel pain. I thought, perhaps the meaning of my life lay in this: to see psychological suffering and to resolve it.

So I began, without regard for cost or consequence, to help those trapped in difficult situations, without stopping. It felt as though only in this way could I avoid being trapped in the cage of life… until one day, I completely exhausted myself.

When I was finally forced to stop and examine all of this, I realized—I had been caring about distant cries, caring about everyone’s psychological suffering; yet I had never cared about this: as a person living in the real material world, how I was supposed to survive. I had trapped myself in a deep sea filled with psychological pain.

When I finally realized this, I solemnly wrote myself a letter, telling myself: I want to live.

Not only to live in a mental sense, but to live in this world in a physical sense.

At that moment, the divide between the mental and material worlds began to dissolve.

And I was like a fish swimming in the depths of the mental ocean, passing through icy waters and scorching magma, seeing the other side of the world—sunlight, land, air, people at play, people rushing about, people bargaining, people attending one job fair after another, people getting married, people getting divorced…

I began to realize and feel that this too is the light of life—a kind of life energy that I had long overlooked, yet is profoundly important.

04. Breaking Out of the Cage

At this point, the first step to surviving in the material world is—making money.

But after wandering and immersing myself in the mental world for so many years, what could I do? Psychological counseling, social work, art therapy—the first thing that came to mind was the helping professions—which could also be considered my “old trade.”

Yet as my understanding of these fields deepened, I experienced a persistent sense of absurdity and fragmentation.

There is an underlying flow of energy here that unsettles me. It seems to lack a healthy ecosystem and the ability to sustain itself.

Take the field of psychological counseling as an example: novice counselors use their own lives to absorb the trauma of clients, earning only modest fees, while also investing large amounts of money into supervision and personal therapy in order to process the wounds left within them;

At the same time, certain opportunists greedily occupy the top of the structure, controlling discourse, running training programs, and earning substantial profits. In many novice counselors, I saw my former self, and I also saw, more clearly, the structural nature of this harm.

Perhaps this could serve as a path of personal cultivation, but it is not a profession suited for making a living, nor is it an entry point for changing the world.

Of course, I also saw explorations that excited me: some equally perceptive female counselors formed mutual-support groups on their own, creating small ecosystems—such practices have appeared both domestically and internationally.

But I soon realized that this was not what I truly wanted—it still leaned more toward inward cultivation, rather than outward action to change the world.

It was time to leave. I needed something wilder, yet full of love and connection.

05. Encountering HappyPower

Speaking of leaving, where was I going to go? I didn’t know.

So I kept my “art therapy stall” going, earning just enough to get by, while searching for opportunities along the way.

At the time, my thinking was rather simple and somewhat pessimistic: if I could find a way to realize my dreams before I could no longer move freely in my hometown, that would already be enough for me.

With this mindset, in February this year, while searching for “art therapy” podcasts, I happened to come across:

Under the Tree, Riding the Wind 05. Becca | From art therapy to building an amusement park with her own hands, she uses play to create a new form of energy powered by joy.

The moment I saw the title, I was hooked. I had a vague feeling that this was what I had been looking for. And just like that, with excitement and a sense of wonder, I stepped into the world of HappyPower: I joined the community in February, became an ambassador in March, and through repeated interactions with everyone, I was moved and convinced—until finally, in July this year, I became a core team member of HappyPower.

I was like Alice who had just fallen into the rabbit hole—nervous, excited, full of curiosity—spending a sweet period filled with hope and joy.

At that time, I had not yet realized how much effort it would take to pursue the seemingly crazy idea of changing the world.

Fortunately, I am a stubborn person.

06. The Choice of Life

Before deciding to apply to join the core team, I asked myself: do I really want to join HappyPower? Can someone like me, who knows nothing about the real world, really start a business? In this process, I will inevitably face many unimaginable difficulties—can I really persevere? Can I make such a commitment and stand with the team all the way?

I thought about it for a long time—if my past self saw systemic harm and evil, then in HappyPower I saw systemic love, action, and methodology. This would be a doorway to my ideal world.

I heard myself say: yes, I want to embark on this journey. Even if the road ahead is dangerous, I do not want to feel futile regret at the end of my life. Therefore, I will use my life to uphold this commitment.

I set a three-year timeframe.

I told myself: if I am able to join the core team of HappyPower, no matter what I encounter, in the next three years, I will do my best to face all difficulties and do the best I can.

07. Growing Through Real Action

After a long journey, time has finally brought me to the present—a present where I have already messed up many things and am now trying to reflect and learn from them.

At the beginning, I was afraid. Even though I had made a promise, when faced with real difficulties, I was still at a loss.

However, although real-world difficulties can sometimes exceed imagination, the good news is that they can be overcome. This is the realization I came to after messing up many things. I still feel confused, anxious, and afraid, but I have learned to move forward while carrying these feelings.

To be honest, at this moment, it is hard for me to write a perfect ending, or to offer any striking life philosophy. I still cannot answer the meaning of life—after all, this book called life is still unfinished.

So I will end with something from a recent “If You Were a Book” activity in the group: every page is a door—feel free to open it and explore with me.

Thank you for reading this far. Goodbye.