Ah, gratitude. My old friend.
I’m obviously grateful for the beautiful basics of my life like my kids, my family, my friends and my home. I’m also really grateful for my work and for the many opportunities I’ve had to volunteer over the years.
But I’m actually really grateful for the mess.
Even when I’m knee deep in the messes of life I’m thankful for the opportunity to simply be alive - to learn and grow and make-it-through and be a witness to humanity and all the broken beauty it presents. I’ve been in that place where I was doubled over with sadness and fear and it’s tough to keep an eye on gratitude in those moments, but it’s possible. It takes practice and a commitment to coming back to it again and again even when I fail miserably.
Expressing gratitude is my lifeline. The process of identifying the things that I’m thankful for in the middle of the mess gives me so much perspective. It’s a tool I learned from my friend, Nicole. She’s awesome at practicing gratitude in the middle of it all. She writes handwritten letters, she calls to say thank you, she’s conscious of her blessings, she’s amazing at forgiveness and she’s so very real about it all and the struggles she encounters on her own journey.
One of the ways I practice gratitude in the middle of the mess is through memory keeping. I use photos and words to document my life and express gratitude as I write my story from one day to the next. It’s through this process of documentation that I truly see (myself) all the things I have to be thankful for every day of my life.
Here’s to second chances, forgiveness, compassion, embracing imperfections and gratitude in this mess called life.
