Thank you Denzel and 12 steps🙏
Here's my recent little story of re-orienting toward and attitude of gratitude...
I spent the first five days of 2024 sick in bed (COVID?), and at first I felt bad for myself. Poor me having to start the year sick. Poor me having to cancel client sessions for the week….
My mind also started doing some pretty impressive acrobatics to ascribe meaning to the fact that I was starting the year with COVID: Does this mean it’s going to be a bad year? Does this mean that all the fun things I had planned this week (dance class, new writing project) are actually unaligned and I should give them up immediately? Is this a sign from the universe that everything in my life, ever, past, present and future is wrong?
Gah mind, shut up!! 😝
The mind is really quite adept at twisting the most mundane facts into beautiful dark twisted fantasies, isn’t it? Good thing my sickness does not mean anything except that I had been traveling and was exposed to lots of germs and was very tired and then I got sick 🙃
After a day or two of mental acrobatics, I started to re-orient toward an attitude of gratitude and see all I had, not what I was lacking. And I really have quite a lot. A warm and safe apartment, with hot running water, a beautiful view of the city and the mountains, a cozy bed with blankets, books on my nightstand, and a husband to bring me three meals a day in bed. Plus enough strength for daily walks and enough appetite to eat ice cream and cake in bed for dessert. So yea, it really wasn't that bad.
I actually think I fell in love with Evan all over again each time I saw the care with which he tended to me. The way he… decorated my peanut butter toast with bananas and cut the strawberries perfectly, put his hand on my forehead several times a day to check my temperature, warned me that the chicken noodle soup was hot and to take care not to burn my tongue, ate ice cream and cake in bed with me, brought me coconut water, in a glass with ice and a straw…
The way his torso looked so strong and sturdy each time he brought my tray of food to me. The fact that he thought to deliver my food on a tray! The way that I let him take full care of me, without trying to jump in and help.
And here I am today actually feeling grateful I had covid. This is not me trying to force a silver lining on a less than ideal situation. I literally feel renewed and rejuvenated, like my life gets to begin again.
I am extra grateful to be able to work out, coffee tastes even yummier, and I am noticing little miracles more frequently. Like the: way the crows commune and fly together every evening right before sunset, misplaced seagulls (are they seagulls? I have no idea but they look gull-like) in the park, nakedness of the winter trees, their silhouettes works of art against the gray Portland sky, feeling that Fred Again’s music evokes in me, way the particles of almond milk don't dissolve in my iced coffee and float around like little chunks of ice, way the power lines looked against the backdrop of the cotton candy sunset sky outside the cemetery yesterday…
So here I am nine days into 2024, loving the simple miracle of being alive. Alive in my toes and the backs of my knees and in the spaces in between my fingers and in the depths of my ovaries and in each strand of my poofy hair and in the chambers of my heart ♥️
XO,
Teresa
PS I do have a new writing project to share with you soon. Hopefully next week if all goes according to plan (which, as we know, things often do not go according to plan) 😁