As I sit here on Thanksgiving morning, I look back at this year and find so many moments of gratitude, it seems I had a year full.
My moments of gratitude are interrupted with moments of sheer pain, frustration, sorrow, confusion and tangled thoughts; it is only when I truly see the whole picture that I am overwhelmed with gratitude, knowing I was spared.
Spared a lifetime stuck in that thought pattern, or held prisoner by that belief, to be forever at the mercy of another, while never seeing me.
It isn’t so much that they didn’t see me, but I didn’t see me.
Seeing and feeling me, learning how to respond that is respectful of me, what honors my soul, bringing forth a new version of me, one that is authentic and uniquely me, one that brings me to life.
Gratitude of such magnitude, there isn’t a word that adequately expresses this freedom; it is like breathing or not breathing, love or fear, living or being dead in your life.
To not be dead in my life is beyond what words can hold, to be alive in each moment, aware that I am connected to the Universe, that there are no mistakes, just opportunities to expand further and further, that even the darkest of the darkest moments are bringing me back to myself.
The Universe only wants the grandest version of me; it doesn’t want a replica of someone else’s dreams.
This past year I have been shown all the places I was still stuck, lost in the dark, and each time I become aware, I bring peace in to me.
In peace I am overwhelmed in gratitude.
I am thankful on this Thanksgiving Day for all the moments of pain, the untangled thoughts, the dark stuck places, and sorrow of what isn’t, for they all came bearing gifts.
They all delivered a part of me that wasn’t free.
Hell doesn’t seem like hell when it comes bearing gifts.
I am grateful for my pain and for my suffering, for it was grieving the loss of me.
It was telling me where I wasn’t present.
In the darkness I mourned the loss of me.
It was in the dark that I found me.
On this Thanksgiving day, I thank you.
