I am grateful. I feel so blessed and loved and I am grateful for feeling this way. I am grateful for the people in my life who love and bless me. I am grateful for the opportunity to love and bless the people in my life.
I have a list of blog topics that grows daily and when I was trying to decide which one I would write about, the word and feeling "gratitude" kept coming into my heart and my head. I'm working on putting together a yoga class and gratitude is the theme there as well. I know better than to ignore myself when I have these moments so this post is about gratitude and its place in my life right now.
I recently went through a separation with my romantic partner and the separation involved me moving to a new space. Neither of these things were easy, emotionally or physically. I am still grieving the losses.
And I feel grateful. I am grateful because I have wonderful friends who helped me emotionally and physically through these last few months: my friend who offered me a place to live when I needed one, at an extremely affordable rate; my friend who took an extraordinary amount of time out of his work day to help me move things I couldn't move by myself; my friends who took time to talk with me, to help me process, who put up with me when I was a wreck and sort of a bitch and loved me in spite of myself.
I am grateful for the Thanksgiving I was able to spend with my mom and two of my beautiful sisters. The memories we made and the laughs we had are priceless. My time with them reminds me of who I am and how much my family loves and supports me. They somehow understood that weekend was about us and not about asking questions about what happened or what my life status was.
I am grateful for the people I work with and the customers who come into my work places. These people share themselves, their energy, their personalities and their experiences with me on a regular basis and allow me to serve them, which is a beautiful gift in and of itself to give someone...the opportunity to serve. I am blessed to have jobs that leave me in a better mood when I leave than when I got there.
I am grateful for being reminded of how I touch other people in ways I'm not always aware of...and for how it seems to happen on days when I need it the most: the day my nephew called me to tell me he got prizes from Boy Scouts because I helped him sell popcorn and "it was all because of you, Aunt Amy!"; the day I received a thank you card from my sister thanking me for being present at her bachelorette party and for cutting my shirt into a sports bra (I laughed and cried at that!) and for being a good older sister.
I am grateful to have the opportunity, time and space right now to process and work towards clarity in many areas of my life...to get out of the "grayness". And I am grateful for being grateful. I am not saying any of this has been easy and trust me, I've shed my share of tears and been sad and depressed and lacked energy and been a bitch and not loved myself or others during this time period. But the notion that I am still grateful despite the hurt and sadness and transition....for that I am truly grateful because I think this is the first time in my life I am in a healthy enough state of mind, body and soul to be able to experience both things at the same time. Both/and NOT or.
There are two quotes which I think are very fitting to what I am trying to say with this post:
"There is a calmness to a life lived
in gratitude, a quiet joy."--Ralph H. Blum
I feel that calm in the midst of my inner and outer transition and turmoil and I do believe it is gratitude that has allowed me to feel calm and at peace. Gratitude has made it easier to deal with anger, sadness, hurt and anxiety. Sometimes it soothes those feelings, sometimes it makes them smaller and sometimes there isn't room for them anymore because of the gratitude taking up all the space. That's how I've experienced it.
To summarize, I want to say that this experience has not been easy. I do not want my message to be misconstrued-like there was not hurt, sadness, anger...all of the emotions associated with loss. Like I said earlier...I have been a wreck and depressed and it has been hard on me. That said, there is a calm within me and I have experienced gratitude during these times...it's both/and, not one way or the other.
I also want to convey the message that expressing gratitude to someone is extremely powerful for both the giver and the recipient. You do not know how your gratitude might touch someone when they need it. And you might not know how much your own gratitude can do for you in tumultuous times. So let people know what you're grateful for and be specific. There is a powerful beauty in handwriting the message.
The second quote is the quote used in this post's title by Garrison Keillor: "Thank you God, for this good life,
and forgive us if we do not love it enough." We are all blessed...especially if we are reading this blog, there is no doubt we are blessed. Love of life and gratitude...they may not be synonymous but they are definitely entwined, in my experience. And that, dear reader, might be for a different blog post. Suffice it to say, gratitude has allowed me to love my life in all of its various, beautiful, sometimes harried, sometimes scary, sometimes exciting, sometimes contented stages. And for that, I AM GRATEFUL.
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