With a Grateful Heart...

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving (also known in our house as Elastic-Waist Pants Day). Frankly, I've had mixed feelings about that holiday for a long time, but this year it's enabling to me to take five days off, which I get to spend with my daughter, and I'll have dinner with wonderful friends. So I'm not going to look at it all too closely, shake my head at the excess it seems to inspire, or complain about anything.

I'm going to enjoy it. 

The thing I really do like about Thanksgiving is that also inspires gratitude... and better yet, gratitude spoken aloud. That's pretty nice, really. I try hard (and mostly succeed) to recognize and express gratitude every day, for big and small things. I work in an industry where many people have precious little and/or deal with seemingly insurmountable obstacles, so I find it's necessary for my own well-being to be grateful for what I have; for what I'm given.

Today I'm going to list, with a grateful heart, many of the things I'm thankful for. My list is long. I hope yours is, too.

I'm grateful... 

• For my daughter - for her beauty, strength, resilience, humor, intelligence, and for the way she loves me and all of her people
• For my dog and two cats - for their silly, playful, loving natures, and for how, because of them, I'm never alone and always feel adored
• For my friends, both in-person and online, near and far - for their love and support and incredible humor through all of Life's ups and downs and crazy times
• For my family, near and far - for their love, help when I need it, tremendous humor, and for a connection to both past and future
• For my job and coworkers - for the most wonderful work environment within an organization that does good, important work for people who truly need our help
• For the people I serve, who never fail to remind me of how lucky I am, even if my life is far from perfect
• For a second job that allows me to work when I want
• For the wonderful, caring doctors, nurses, and staff at the cancer center, where I spend more time than I'd like, but where I now feel at home
• For the pool at the gym, which I don't use as often as I should, but which allows me to do the physical activity I love the most, whenever I want
• For the Internet - for keeping me connected to the people I care about and for allowing me to share in their lives and them to share in mine; for making the world so much smaller; for bringing me interesting and/or important information with a mere touch
• For other people's stories - some of which I read or hear about, some of which I'm gifted directly; they remind me that we're all connected and that we all struggle and need love and acceptance
• For wonderful stories of people doing good in the world; they give me hope
• For the ability to express myself creatively in ways that often affect others in positive ways
• For a roof over my head, food on the table, oil for the furnace, clothes on my back, and for a car that still gets me to where I'm going without too much worry
• For wonderful books and movies and music and art - things that make Life worth living
• For the small community I enjoy living in and the bigger world I want to see
• For the uplifting little connections I make daily with strangers - be it the clerk in the McDonald's drive-thru, the person in line with me at Target, or someone at the dog park
• For the dog park, which my boy and I love like crazy
• For the ability and desire to look forward, to make plans, to strive for a better life

I think it's very easy to get caught up in worrying over what we don't have as opposed to seeing what we do. I know I am guilty of that, probably fairly often. But it seems to me that when I really do focus on what I have, my 'what I don't have' list shrinks quite a bit. 

And that's a good thing. 

So happy season of gratitude, my friends. May your cup runneth over... and may you catch it before it stains the rug! 

XO,