What’s happening here at Happy Magazine?

Hello everyone and Happy Sunday. It’s been awhile since I last shared some updates about both me and Happy Magazine here on the website so I thought I might do that today.

Launch of the magazine

The launch of the first print edition of Happy Magazine has been a huge success and I am extremely pleased and proud. During launch week, news of the magazine reached over 20,000 people organically on social media – just through mentions, shares, comments and likes. I am so grateful to all of you who took time out of your day to help get the word out – thank you. The response to the magazine has been amazing and my email inbox has been overwhelmed with hundreds of messages of support. I am still writing back to each message.

Issue 2 – Spring/Summer 2019

Each and every email or message received here at Happy Magazine is very important to me. They form my motivation for this personal journey of mine to make both this website and magazine a reality for Ireland. Needless to say, but I’ll say it anyway, work is already well underway on issue 2. It’s going to be a cracker of an issue, with a lot of reader suggestions and feedback incorporated. Currently, I am taking bookings for relevant and responsible businesses that would like to advertise in the issue. The closing date for ad bookings is Friday 8 March and hopefully at that date, I will have enough booked ads to make the magazine happen on schedule, in time for Spring/Summer 2019.

I really love this, folks. Happy Magazine has turned into a huge passion for me. Well, it always was, from day one, but my love for it has grown even more over the months and now years that I have been doing this. Happy Magazine has become a part of me, a part of my life and a part of my family’s life. People ask me all the time how I have something to post about every day here on the website. Back when I first started I used to worry about ‘running out of content’. But now I know that’ll never happen – the world will never stop being a source for positivity, joy and wellness – the three things we love the most here on our website pages.

This website is for you – is it living up to your expectations?

I’d like to stress that this website is for all of you. I hope I am hitting the mark everyday when you come here to read our daily post. Is our content relevant and inspiring for you? Please know that you can email me at any point if there is something you’d like to say.

Would you like to write something for Happy Magazine?

I am also always on the lookout for readers that would like to share their personal cancer journey’s here on HappyMagazine.ie. We have a Support section on the website where we share Your Stories. If you feel you might like to write about your own journey, everything that has happened to you to date since your own diagnosis, we’d love to share your words with others. As you all know, we believe there is huge strength, courage and hope in reading each other’s stories. They remind us we are not alone on this path, and sometimes that is the very thing we need to get us through the day. Or, if there’s a particular topic you’d like to write about for our audience, we invite Reader’s Posts too.

Contributors and advertisers

I am also always on the lookout for relevant and responsible businesses that might like to contribute content or advertise here on the website. It is my intention to create Happy Magazine into a profitable publishing business, however I am not quite there yet. The support I receive from businesses who wish to advertise their product, service or support to you is what makes our print edition happen. To this end, if you know anyone who might like to advertise here, or indeed, if YOU are a potential advertiser, I would love to hear from you.

How am I?

A lot of readers ask me how I am doing. Well, I am very happy to say I am doing well. I am now just reaching one year since the end of my treatment for my triple negative breast cancer diagnosis. For those of you who don’t know, I was diagnosed in December 2016 with Stage 2B cancer at age 32. I completed thirteen months of treatment including chemotherapy, surgery, radiotherapy and a drug called Capeciteabine. I was and still am extremely grateful for the excellent care that I received from my team at St James’s Hospital in Dublin.

Life now

Life now for me is completely different to the me pre-cancer. Last June when I should have returned to my career as a graphic designer for a large Irish organisation, I took a leap of faith and decided to follow my heart – and this magazine. Since then, I have been continuing to recover from my treatment, learning how to be a stay-at-home mum with a new lease on life and my health, and of course, trying to develop this magazine.

A year post treatment ending and I can say my energy is finally returning. I now go for a run, regularly – and I was never a runner! My friends still remark on this. I walk every day. I spend a lot of time on buying, preparing and cooking whole food meals for my family. I prioritise exercise, rest, mindfulness and joy like never before. There’s nothing like facing the idea of death to realise the importance of life.

I am still human, though. And two years on from my diagnosis, I still have moments filled with fear. I still can’t read anything about triple negative breast cancer in the news. I still think about cancer (and not because of the magazine) every day. I don’t like to talk about my diagnosis days any more. But you know what? I’m ok with that. I’m ok with all of this. In fact, I am actually happier than I have ever been. Maybe not as carefree, fine, but happy. Because I know what happiness really is now, and it’s about living my life, on my terms.

So where to from here?

Rest assured I am working hard on this website and the Happy Magazine print edition for the foreseeable future. I hope to achieve my goal of putting out a Spring/Summer edition in May and an Autumn edition in September. They will both be dependent on having enough relevant advertising funding, but with a bit of luck, we’ll get there.

Theme for March – Gratitude

During February we had a loose theme happening with our daily content around the topic of self-care. For March, the theme will be gratitude. Perhaps this is a word that sparks something for you? If you’d like to let me know what gratitude means to you, please do. You can reach me at holly@happymagazine.ie

Thank you all for reading to the very end of this post! I hope I have shared with you a little slice of how things are here at Happy Magazine HQ. And I hope you all have a lovely, relaxed Sunday.

By Happy Magazine Editor, Holly Kennedy