My Gratitude Practice

I’m starting a new gratitude practice. I’ll share mine. Will you share with me yours?

This month of love, I’m going to spend more time everyday looking at and appreciating what is beautiful in life, even in the challenge.

For the gift buried within everything. So here’s a start... maybe it will remind you too...

I am so grateful for the sun, especially sunrise orange glow. For the rain when it falls on me gently. For the silence whispers and sometimes fierce roars of the wind. For the ability to put my bare feet on forest floor or my hands in garden dirt. For the ability to get wet, dirty, wind blown and bathed clean again. These things renew me and remind me of my true wealth.

I’m grateful for hot spring waters heated from the molten core of this earth, for floating in ocean waves, for rock faces and rope swings, and the magic of staring and singing around a fire’s light and crackle.

I am so grateful for some peace in my heart right now. I’m grateful for the pause and slowing down of this time. I am grateful to feel grateful.

Grateful to be more connected than ever in what makes me feel good because, with less social connection, I have had to come home to myself in a new way. I have had to fight for myself with myself. I am grateful to have a new understanding that I am not to compromise on what I need to thrive. I’m grateful for the duty of tending to my body, the softness of my heart, and the ability of my mind when it has space. These are the conditions that bring my gifts forth for others. I’m grateful for the perfection in this design.

I am grateful for the unconditionality of my love. I am grateful for the power of forgiveness in my life to heal my wounds and others. I am grateful for learning of and practicing honesty, so that I can be truly seen and known by my people. I am grateful for vulnerability as strength. I am grateful for feedback and accountability from loving friends and even those who don’t see themselves in me. I am grateful to trust myself to hold myself through any emotional challenge with love. I am grateful to have converted my inner voice from the critic to the loving parent (most of the time). I am grateful for my hopeful, trusting heart that keeps dreaming after being disappointed, it makes me feel un-extinguishable.

I am grateful for my mother’s trust and love. For my father’s playfulness. For my siblings going first so I can learn from them. For my nieces teaching me new depths of love and engaging my inner child. For my friends who have taught me so much, supported me, and reflected my gifts. I am grateful for all of my teachers.

I am grateful for every single person here and in my life that has touched me in some small or big way. What an absolute miracle this life journey is.

Thank you. Gracias. Asante. Mahalo.

For life just as it is.