Today I am grateful for health.  Health is a choice in most cases.  We can either choose the discipline of taking care of ourselves now or have the pain of trying to fix it later.  Both are hard and we get to choose the hard we want to deal with.  It is incredibly empowering to choose the former and, not to sound cliché, but it really is worth it to help our bodies function at their best.  Health and time are our greatest gifts and the more we dedicate to our health, the more time we have to enjoy.  I’m not always on my game, I’m the first to admit that, but I know I feel infinitely better when I take care of myself and put in the effort to feel good as opposed to giving in to the tiredness or eating like crap.  Health is a gift and this world supplies us with all the natural medicine we need.  I do not take that for granted.

Today I am grateful for determination.  We all face challenges in our lives but I’ve noticed lately how many of the challenges are either self-created or chosen somehow—because we always have a choice.  I’ve been working on a project for a while now and it seems to keep losing momentum.  The idea never leaves me so I know this is something that I clearly am meant to work on and the idea of it excites me so I know this is tied to my purpose.  I keep chipping away at it, dipping my toes in to see how the initial pieces are received but then I get distracted or I make a “bad” choice and things get delayed.  I’m not sure why I engage in that kind of self-sabotage, but I am grateful for the determination to continue to address it and the knowledge that it’s all been my choice.  I can easily make a different choice, I can say no to what I’m doing, and I can say no to the distraction.  I know this is something that’s going to pay off in the end, I just need to continue redirecting my focus.  I know I can.

Today I am grateful for life.  My son has been having a rough time lately.  I know he’s experiencing loneliness and boredom because he’s an only child.  On top of that he’s 6 so he struggles to find ways to entertain himself sometimes.  Given the circumstances we are in at the moment, I am not always able to be present and help him work through this.  I know it isn’t always a bad thing.  Kids need some boredom to stimulate creativity.  But I also know that the projects I’m working on may have to wait at times.  I know I need to continue to prioritize my son’s needs and I can always tell when he’s having a moment.  I am grateful to be able to work with him and I am grateful to be able to help him through it.  Life is about supporting each other and we all have times we need a little more support than others—and sometimes we need to give more support.  This is one of those moments for my son and I am glad to help him.

Today I am grateful for where I’m at in life.  There are moments when we really don’t take stock of how far we’ve come and I’ve been doing that a lot lately.  It’s easy to do when we have a lot on our plate and we distract ourselves with the endless to-dos.  It happens to all of us.  But the thing is, we need those moments of honoring what we’ve done and what we have accomplished.  Life isn’t a checklist because that list will never be completed—there will always be something else to do.  So when I look around, I can say that I am proud of where I am.  I am grateful for my family and being able to help each other, for the love and support we have around us, for my home, for putting food on the table, for the things we have built in our home, for understanding how rich life is.  It’s easy to want to be on to the next thing, but I am grateful for where I’m at and I won’t diminish what it has taken to get here.

Today I am grateful for rest and safety.  My mind is always on edge and I’m usually in some degree of fight or flight.  It’s how I’ve been most of my life, always waiting for the other shoe to drop.  With that being said, there are moments when my nervous system is in overdrive and I really don’t notice it until I’m ready to drop.  The body and mind aren’t designed to be in that state of sustained anticipation or trauma for extended periods of time.  Constantly waiting for things to go wrong is a trauma response for the record.  But I am grateful for the ability to pull myself out of that and allow my mind and body to come down a bit.  So much of what I’ve been looking for in life was actually safety.  I surrounded myself with things because that made me feel safe, I surrounded myself with people who could take care of me because I didn’t think I could do it on my own.  But now I am grateful for the security I’ve brought into my life and see that I am capable of protecting myself when needed.  I can rest.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.