As a mother, I spend a great deal of time imagining what the future might look like for my two young children and contemplating what it means to raise them into happy, healthy adults. After dedicating a significant portion of my childhood and early adulthood to the belief that achieving conventional and extrinsic successes (e.g., graduating as Valedictorian, attending elite universities, and following a specific career trajectory) was ‘making it’ and defined my value in society and to myself, I began to question if I had it right. It took me well into adulthood to unlearn many of these assumptions and understand that what’s ultimately important in life are the intangibles—our everyday blessings, cultivation of community, care for our Earth, travel, self-love and self-discovery, and family, whatever that family structure may look like. My goal is to help percolate the idea that what a child ultimately decides to do in life professionally does not determine their value as a human being.

At the beginning of my book publication journey, I spent an evening with one of my dearest friends mapping out the visual arc of The Question. This ad-hoc brainstorming session ultimately provided the context for the illustrations, which we envisioned as truly beautiful hand drawings that portrayed a theme of magical realism. My ultimate hope was that The Question would never simply be a children’s book, but a true work of art delivering a philosophical message to readers of all ages.

I partnered with Blue Balloon Books, a children’s book publisher, to bring my book to life. Blue Balloon Books works hand in hand with authors to publish original stories that ignite the imagination and curiosity of young learners and readers, and part of the process is to pair these authors with illustrators who can visually manifest their stories. Based on our original storyboarding, my publication team and I provided Jo with the desired themes and per-page elements (e.g., the narrator would be a small child with unruly hair and green eyes, whereas the primary adult would remain faceless throughout most of the book as a means of diverting visual attention to the child). Jo provided black and white rough illustrations based on this original input. I was so thrilled with Jo’s original roughs that we requested very few changes, which meant that she could nearly immediately embark on her full-color, final illustration process. Jo innately understood my vision for The Question, and I think the book is a visual masterpiece.

After embarking on a deep meditation practice about five years ago, I made the decision to leave a job that was profoundly unsatisfying and deleterious to my sense of self. I began perusing new professional avenues and kept running into mental barriers, asking myself too many questions that revolved around ‘what’. During a meditation, a simple yet profound thought arose within me, which was that I had been asking myself the wrong question. Instead of asking ‘what’ (e.g., “What am I going to do next? What will my role be? What company will recognize my talents? What job title should I seek?”), I should be asking ‘how’ (e.g., “How do I want to split my time between my career and my children? How do I want my life to unfold? How do I want to affect the world? And how do I want to feel at the end of each day and at the end of my life?”). Ultimately, I needed to reframe my mental lens and change the question from ‘what’ to ‘how’ I will be in this world.

Life requires so much hard work, often beginning in childhood, and it’s nearly inevitable that children will one day have a job, a trade or a profession. Yet the value of a human—whether as a child or an adult—should not be predicated on their extrinsic achievements. I encourage my children to learn not for the sake of getting good grades, but for acquiring knowledge and fostering their curiosity about the world around them. And a small family ritual dedicated to gratitude can help unify a family and bring perspective to life’s daily trials. Each morning, my family gathers together to ring a gong and give thanks for our everyday blessings (our family, our home, our pets, our community, our opportunities). And each evening, we hold hands before dinner and say a benediction of gratitude that was co-written by our children. Whatever this ritual looks like for your family (e.g., a morning walk, a family circle around a fire, etc.), setting aside time to say ‘thank you’ is so important, as it helps ensure that we are raising kids who have a strong sense of peace and well-being, who are empathetic and resilient, and who can look outside of themselves. A practice of gratitude ultimately reminds us that “life is enough.”