I take the time every week to share things that I am grateful for.  More often than not I find they are the common, every day occurrences.  The miracles of life and the things that keep us moving on the regular.  It’s the simple things we need, the simple things the soul craves.  Not to say our life isn’t incredibly layered and complex, just that the roots of what we seek are not in anything bigger than love, hope, faith, and purpose.  The purpose of life is joy and remembering the worth in our existence because the fact that we exist and are conscious of it and able to make things out of nothing in this world is a miracle that goes far too underrated.  There are obviously the big things to be grateful for as well, but there are times we need to see how the little things create the big things. It always starts at the beginning. 

There are things I have accomplished this year that I never imagined I would be able to.  There are fears I began releasing that I have carried with me for so many years that I believed they were who I was.  I have created wonderful experiences this year, I have seen that there is joy in so much.  Joy in connection with source, self, and others.  I have taken the leap and set things in motion that I would have waited to be invited to before.  This isn’t about a power play, it’s a reminder of the power of embracing who we are and that we are able to create anything we want in this world.  We are meant to create what we want. 

I am grateful to be alive and to work with this universe and to learn to trust again.  I am grateful for the people I have brought into my life, the love and support that I truly never thought was possible.  I am grateful to give back and to have fun and to be open to experiences.  I am grateful to shed the things that didn’t serve like fear and control (not that they are totally absent, but they come from different places now) and to understand the importance and necessity of allowing.  Of letting life to breathe.  I am grateful to see what comes of doing the work we are meant to do and the endless, beautiful opportunities and abundance that is in this world. 

I am grateful seeing the sunrise and sunset every day, the turning of life, feeling the wind, being outside. I am grateful to take care of myself and my family and learn what loving self really looks like.  I am grateful to break the patterns of perceived selfishness for believing in self and taking care of self.  I am grateful to honor who I am and to understand the roots of where I come from.  I am grateful to forgive the past, the people before me, the things that were done to me, the things I did to myself.  I am grateful to understand what is mine to reconcile from the past and to see the truth of who people are—we sometimes believe just because we are family that things are easy and we get along, but there is massive healing that needs to take place.  I am grateful for that healing and acceptance. 

I am grateful for all of the joy I have brought into my life, to feel good about the choices I make and to let go of insecurity regarding loss and not having enough.  I am grateful, endlessly grateful to my husband and son.  There were many times I literally didn’t think we would make it together—and I mean together in a relationship and quite frankly that we would both be alive if we stayed together.  But I am grateful to have shifted the perspective of what the relationship needed to look like and to have opened up to what is.  I am grateful to move forward together.  I am so blessed with my son and I am forever grateful for the joy I see in him, his curiosity, his exuberance, his joy at living.  I am grateful for his compassion and love and I see so much hope in him.  I am grateful for his constant reminders to be in touch with the childlike side of me.  To remember what it is like to be curious and create without fear or abandon or even logic sometimes.  I am grateful for creativity and health and living. This is what life is about.  The real power of gratitude is understanding the absolute miracle that is life and to live it fully, every day.