You can practice anything...
Basketball, chess, cooking, being mean, Spanish, being generous, the guitar...
Whatever you practice you will get better at :)
I am trying my goddammedest to practice gratitude.
I am grateful for my kiddo. Every day with him is a gift. He can make me smile, enjoy a trip to the grocery store, and remember to take a walk to the park :)
I am grateful for my friends, too many to even keep in regular touch with, surrounding me with love and prayer and positive thoughts. True blue.
I am grateful for today. Today I am OK. Today I am healthy. Today I have enough money, enough time, enough food, and a car that runs.
(last week I was without a car...but I am trying not to be so negative, so I'll save that story for later)
I am grateful for my chosen family, they have cinched me to their hearts and won't let go no matter how far I wander.
Practicing gratitude is not easy. As your mind steers towards sadness, loss, fear, mistrust...you have to take the reins and forcibly pull back. I am using what I am calling my "saviour memories" to guide me back to positive thoughts, to get just the hint of a smile on my face - and I am using them over and over these days.
I remember being in college...my little sister was pregnant with her first child, she herself still a baby. She had married the baby-daddy, and was doing her best at setting up house in a single-wide that sat squarely in the middle of a drug dealing part of town. No high school diploma, no role models, and a pot head sister who would call and "check in" as if that did ANY GOOD. But still.
She seemed so together to me at the time. I didn't see the single-wide trailer, I saw a home-owner. I didn't see the redneck, ill-tempered baby-daddy, I saw a husband. I didn't see a path heading for failure...I saw her beginning. Grace was easier for me as a young pup.
So I called each week and checked in.
One day she shared a dream she had the night before. She was ready to pop out that baby and filled with hormones. In the dream she had gone into labor. She pushed and pushed and pushed. The dream room was filled was screams and cheers as she labored hard. The baby was born and the room fell quiet. The doctor solemnly looked at my sister, and with tears in his eyes he said three simple words:
"I'm so sorry".
My dream sister was filled with terror - why had the doctor apologized?! What had happened to her precious newborn?! Then the doctor handed her the newly born, tightly swaddled baby goat that she had just delivered.
She woke up screaming and inconsolable.
The story was...and still is...fucking HILARIOUS. I laughed until I cried when she told me. And she found laughter too.
Her daughter was born the next week. And I am sure I stopped on the way to the hospital to smoke a bowl before I met my niece. Because I was special like that.
So rather than blog about how sad I am, how heartbroken I feel, and how I will never ever sleep next to my true love again...I am going to share my saviour stories :)
Stay tuned! Stay safe! Stay Grateful!
:)
