Theresa Bundgaard · Phoenix, Arizona
My Story
On Seeking, Clearing, and Coming Home
I am a mom, a former middle school teacher, a seeker of chillness, and a woman who has spent a lot of years noticing what actually makes life feel good — and what just gets in the way.
The book Optimizing Happiness didn't begin as a grand plan. It began during a particular season of my life — a time when I had a lot of ideas swirling about what genuine happiness looks like, and a husband who simply said: write them down.
So I did. I wrote the whole book in three months. And somewhere in the middle of it, I realized that something larger was at work. The clarity that was coming through me wasn't just my own thinking. That book became, unexpectedly, a turning point — in my work, and in my faith.
I've come to believe that most of what we call unhappiness isn't really a lack of something. It's an excess. Tension held in the shoulders. Clutter in the mind. A life built around what's urgent rather than what's true. Women over 40 often feel the weight of all of it — decades of doing for others, of being capable and responsible and showing up — and somewhere in there, they've lost track of what it feels like to feel light.
That's what this work is about. Not fixing. Not optimizing in the productivity sense of the word. But discovering and removing what's in the way — so that what's actually there can be heard.
I'm a certified positive psychology coach, and I work one-on-one with women — in person in Phoenix, and over Zoom. I'd love to meet you.