Karen Johansen
Karen Johansen is a testament to the notion that happiness comes from within and is a matter of setting your intention and engaging actively in life each day. After an idyllic early childhood, she lost her mother to cancer at the age of five. A village stepped in to support her and her sister, helping to sustain the early joys of dance, music, love, warmth, and family. She took these gifts with her, married her high school sweetheart, and had her children, becoming the warm, loving, accepting mother she had in her life only briefly. After 30 years as a coach’s wife and nearly 20 years supporting middle school students, she retired at 52. She could not have known that she would be suddenly widowed within four years and see an unknown future stretched out before her. She could have crawled into a hole of grief and despair. Instead, she chose gratitude, faced her fears, and created a life uniquely her own.
