A grateful heart is not always easy to maintain. We, in our fragile human experience, are often tested to the limits and often are brough to our knees with pain. But, by holding onto gratitude for the simplest of things, our hearts can remain open to love and the true joy in understanding God's grace. Jacke Madden Haugh's "A Grateful Heart is a Happy Heart" is a collection of short stories where she looks at life through the lens of gratitude to find happiness in the minutia of each day. For her, a life without joy is no life at all.
Jackie Madden Haugh calls herself the Guardian of Memories, a storyteller who preserves family history in the written form. Her first book, "My Life in a Tutu: My Need for Surviving Perfection" the story of a single woman in her fifties searching for the woman she was born to be after divorce, was launched in 2015. Her next creation, "The Promise I Kept: My Journey with Dad from Home Care Through Hospice," is the memoir of her nine years as a caregiver to her aging father. Launched in 2018, it tells the story of how through the difficult trials of caring for a dying soul that she discovered it was she who was being cared for by her father, only spiritually. Jackie is also a columnist for a local newspaper, The Los Altos Town Crier, where she writes musings on how she finds gratitude in life's simply moments. These stories led to the creation of "75 Beats to a Happy Heart" and "A Grateful Heart is a Happy Heart." Jackie was born and raised in the Bay Area of northern California and is the mother of four adult children.