Today I am grateful for laughter.  We spent time with our friends last night.  Everyone brought some food and we had a really nice meal together.  We definitely ate too much but it was a beautiful time.  At one point we kind of drifted into separate groups, each sharing conversation and ours spent a huge majority of the night just laughing and talking.  The laughter really made the evening.  Not that I haven’t been laughing lately but probably not that much.  It really felt good, like a whole body cleansing and releasing of fears and thoughts related to other things going on outside.  We were all present with each other and the whole evening flowed and our groups merged and separated and flowed with each other.  It felt good to have so many people to connect with and enjoy each other’s company.  Sometimes you need to remember that laughter really is the best medicine.      

Today I am grateful for standing my ground.  My people pleasing tendencies haven’t often made me a really strong person.  I’d know I’m right about a certain feeling and still give in when other people came around.  For a long time I was bark and no bite (not that I take joy in biting).  Regardless, my husband and I have had a situation with some acquaintances for a few months now that resulted from some pretty unfair expectations on the other party’s part.  I was told that I was being blamed for the majority of the situation and since then we have not spoken.  I will admit there are times it’s uncomfortable but at the same time I do not regret standing my ground.  Friends would not have tried to put us in a situation that compromised us in any way—and friends wouldn’t have been mad at us for saying no.  People in our group still talk with them and have different feelings towards them, but I have stood my ground and I am setting the boundary that the behavior wasn’t appropriate.  Relationships can always be repaired but I am not the one who needs to reach out at this point.

Today I am grateful for ideas on moving forward.  My husband and I have been trying to figure out how to change our lifestyle for a while.  We are looking for more time and financial freedom and a more creative way of living.  It’s taken a while to decide what we want to do—projects we keep on our own and projects we do together (we still aren’t 100% decided).  Regardless, I love being in an environment that stimulates creativity.  We went to a market with our friends yesterday (they have a booth for their business) and we saw so many people promoting their businesses and it was so cool to see that level of creativity in people.  Truly, people are amazing and the scope of human creativity knows no bounds.  It’s a beautiful thing to witness.  While we were there one of the ideas my husband has had for a business showed itself in a different way—meaning the guy had the business my husband is considering but he’s doing out of a place we hadn’t considered before.  That was the first time in a long time I’d seen my husband’s eyes light up or show any type of excitement.  We discussed the opportunity and we started discussing the opportunity for our other business moving forward.  It’s an amazing experience to be in the flow of creativity.  I am grateful for the ideas.

Today I am grateful for progress.  With anxiety, I’ve always been a jumper, moving from one activity to another before ever really settling or finding out who I am.  I never felt safe enough to stay in one place long enough to actually see something through.  I also never wanted to get stuck with someone else’s responsibility because I never said no—so if I just disappeared, that person would have to deal with it and I wouldn’t be the bad guy.  That’s a habit I’ve wanted to break for a long time. I’ve had creative ideas and I wanted to carry them forward—and I wanted responsibility for those.  The last few months I have truly buckled down on some projects that I love.  It feels different.  It’s almost like the sensation of a key fitting in a lock and turning it.  I know this is the doorway to where I want to be.  It’s the doorway I’ve waited for for a long time.  I am grateful to move forward.

Today I am grateful for family.  I love my family, I always have.  I’m grateful to have the family I do because they’ve encouraged me in a lot of ways.  I didn’t always get the support I needed and I’ve found out some truths behind their feelings lately and it’s ok.  It hurt at first, but it’s something I probably needed to know in the end.  It’s not like our relationship will end over it, but the relationship needed to change and I think we are there.  I think we needed to become a little more of who we are and this summer has brought out a lot of things for me.  I thought they felt a certain way and the truth came out and, yes, it impacts how I feel about them because I wish this had been said sooner.  Had they told me the truth sooner I would have made different decisions in my life.  I get to make the decisions now.  I still love them, I just know to put less stock in my role with them.  That’s ok.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.