Today I am grateful for the truth.  We are in the grim process of cleaning up my Aunt’s house after her death—the entire family is gone now so it is only us able to do this.  Nothing allows us to process what has happened and what to do next like the truth.  That’s the only thing that allows us to make sense of the situation, it’s why the human mind will always try to logic its way through the scenario, why it will always try to come up with an answer—it’s trying to make things make sense.  The brain will fill in the gaps and try to complete the story and then it will try to rationalize what happened and what was going on.  It amazes me how we have differing experiences even if we are in the same moment.  We have these images of who people are, what we think their experiences were, how they felt and what they thought.  And sometimes, if we are lucky enough, we find the evidence we need to know for sure what was happening, the story of who they are.  Sometimes we can hear it and know, sometimes we need to see it.  But the truth is once we know it, it’s there.  Sometimes we need to ask ourselves if we really need that solidified.  The closure we need is in the way we feel anyway.  And now, I have closure.  My brain doesn’t want to accept parts of it, that stubborn belief that people will always be their best and fulfill their potential (and that they want to, but there is nothing more that can dispute it.  This is what happened, and this is the end result.  There is no need to waste energy trying to make it something else.  There are no re-dos in this game, it’s over.  That’s the truth.    

Today I am grateful for clear signs and reminders.  Seeing the patterns in the family that are 100% evident and obvious, has given me a harsh reality check on a few things.  As I’ve been organizing my thoughts and emotions around everything that has happened in the family, I see more clearly than ever that emotional management is the only way to move forward.  If I want to achieve my dreams and goals then it’s up to me to keep that alive—and letting emotions run rampant to the point I’m unable to function isn’t going to do it.  I’m in the mausoleum of a life that someone allowed that to happen.  Holding onto the emotions, documenting every mark against themselves, looking for their dues, what is right.  I’m learning that isn’t the way to “Get what is owed,” that’s how we start to nosedive in this world.  This family had everything—through hard work and dedication and determination, this family literally created the makings of an empire.  And for pride, for fear, for pleasure, for guilt, for comfort, for ego and what it thought it was owed, they literally crashed it to the ground thinking that was the only way.  We have the opportunity to change the view on this, and that’s what I’m going to do before it’s too late.  The sign/reminder is this: to fly free and pursue the life we are actually meant to have, we need to put the emotion away, close the book, and move on. 

Today I am grateful for understanding responsibility.  We are entirely responsible for our lives and the results we get.  We are responsible for making changes when necessary, for pulling up when we see that we are about to hit, for taking stock and understanding when the situation needs us to pivot—specifically when we see our actions are causing more harm than good.  I hear the way the remaining members of the family speak to each other and I hear them in the phrases I’ve found myself uttering as well.  I ask myself, “are these even really MY feelings or is this something I’m picking up from them?”  Worse, I see that it has been engrained in me so long that I’ve managed to pass some of those beliefs to my husband in the way we operate our family, and in my son under the guise of doing his best turning into perfectionism.  That isn’t who I want to be.  I want to do better     

Today I am grateful for learning forgiveness and patience.  In all this mess, I have my Aunt’s cat.  It’s painful but also kind of ironic.  There’s the loss of my aunt just shy of the year mark of my other Aunt, only a month after the loss of my own cat.  I was NOT anticipating getting another cat and now we are managing an outdoor cat from the neighborhood and now we have this cat.  He is an incredibly sweet boy but also unbelievably shy and scared.  It takes a lot of work to get through to an animal like that and the entire process has brought me into the present moment—that’s all I can do is be present.  I feel so bad for this animal knowing the few days of torture he must have gone through right after my Aunt died.  There is the family dynamic to heal in taking on this animal because he is literally the last living link to her.  There is nothing else we can resolve with her, the family is gone, but we have this animal who had nothing to do with the history who needs our help and love.  And it’s requiring immense patience and will and acceptance and forgiveness to move forward.  It’s sad and healing all at once.  The healing comes with forgiving everything that happened, every horrible event in that home, in the family, in the business.  And putting love in its place.          

Today I am grateful for peace.  There is so much to say about this, some I have said before, some I have felt before.  But what I’m sitting with in this moment is that at the end of the day life will always move on, stuff is just stuff until someone puts value to it, empires will fall if we don’t treat them with respect,  it’s our responsibility to take care of our lives and turn them into something valuable outside of physical/material things, and we only have control over how we live and the definitions we put in place/what we give meaning to because when all is said and done, someone will be going through everything and determining what’s garbage and what isn’t.  I’m grateful this entire mess has shown me what it is to let go and how to reconcile the emotion—ok, maybe not now, but what needs to be done in order to truly move on.  We have to make peace with these emotions, these fears, our behaviors, and then we can change what needs to be changed—and that changes the rest of the course.  And I truly am at peace with all of that.     

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead