Today I am grateful for new connections.  I had a class this week and met a new colleague.  I got to speak with another employee from a different department, someone I’ve know for some time and I was able to articulate some of the pain points I’ve had with my department.  Within minutes I had contacts and a potential solution to develop my program further.  The same day I had a conversation with a coworker about high school and two comments came out: “C’s get degrees” and “It’s not the grades you make it’s the hands you shake.”  I used to hate that kind of commentary because it felt schmoozy and cheap.  But there is some validity to how we work with people.  There is a real reason to take the time to get to know people.  Just today I had lunch with some colleagues and we connected on a personal level outside of work, and when you have connection, there is a bond there.  It’s a certain level of care that brings out the need to help and support each other. 

Today I am grateful for health.  Humans are meant to age differently than we do.  We aren’t meant to deteriorate and fade away, we are meant to develop strength and function and move throughout our lives.  Witnessing what I did to my body over the years and the work I’ve done over the last 10 months, I am constantly and consistently amazed at what we can bring the body back to. When I started this health journey in earnest, I hadn’t realized where my body was at.  I knew I wanted to improve but I didn’t know how much.  As I’ve gotten certain abilities back, I am in awe of the condition the body is meant for.  I am by no means a paragon of anything physically, but I have made incredible strides and experienced first hand that we can come back from a lot.  Anyone who has witnessed or gone through such a transformation personally understands the feeling of respect for the body that comes—that level of appreciation at all times will keep us grounded in reality and able to better maintain our health.

Today I am grateful for music.  I will share a story later this week about a song I heard, but I need to remark on how grateful I am to experience music on that level—nearly, if not completely, spiritual.  I struggled to find words for many of the things I felt as a kid and there always blessedly happened to be some song I would hear that seemed to capture exactly what I was feeling.  The challenging things I couldn’t say, the hopeful things I was too scared to really say, the words I wanted to say to other people.  Music always filled that gap for me.  I loved how there were these people out there, people I didn’t even know, who seemed to completely identify and understand me.  Like they took my thoughts out of my head and put them in this beautiful order that made it all make sense.  It was relief.  I had an English teacher who said that song is the highest form of expression humans have and that struck a chord with me.  It was never lost on me how music is saved and cherished and it is a language of its own that can be shared forever, marked on paper with its symbols that somehow people see and understand.  I will continue to sing, perhaps not always well, but still with all my soul and that part of me will always recognize the soul when I hear other’s music as well. 

Today I am grateful for raw.  It’s been a while since I let myself get dirty.  Things get cluttered and messy and unclear all the time.  I have the best intentions for getting things done and I fall off the track with distraction or things not going how I anticipated, either taking too long or I’m missing pieces to get it done how I wanted to.  But all of those unfinished things start to accumulate and the stress of it has gotten to me lately.  I felt disconnected, moving too quickly and unsure of what to address first.  Everything seemed so intricately connected that choosing the wrong thing could make it all fall—or doing the wrong thing first could make it all come apart.  In those moments I like to get back to my body—even if I forget about it until then.  We need to listen to the cues our body gives us whether it is to slow down or eat a certain thing or that we need to respond to some other call.  I feel this constant pressure (totally self-inflicted) that tells me I need to do it all and get it all done.  And I think I can do it ALL.  So I end up starting it all and get overwhelmed with everything that’s left unfinished and then I can’t figure out what to do first to finish something so nothing gets done and then I spiral.  And that’s when getting raw helps.  I felt lost yesterday night because of that overwhelm and my husband gently shared his view that we had done a lot that day even though I felt like I hadn’t done enough.  My mind is stressing because I still see everything that needs to be done and I don’t want to wait to do it if we can do it today.  He is looking at the fact that we did something.  And he brought me back to reality with his view.  And we compromised—what we can do needs to get done and we will be content with what we can’t do until the time is right to do that too.  And it helped.

Today I am grateful for giving new experiences.  Yesterday we had to pick up a piece of furniture from a friend and coworker of mine and I knew my husband wasn’t totally thrilled about it.  He didn’t necessarily want another piece of furniture and he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to help me with it,  but I knew from the start that this piece would be helpful—so my logic was if we could get it for free let’s make the effort to at least go pick it up.  Regardless, he agreed and I wanted to show my appreciation and it was early so I suggested a new place for us to get some breakfast.  I’d heard of this place from a former employee of mine when she’d brought in some food from there.  It was really good but I hadn’t thought of it in years and then the other day on the way to work I happened to look to my right and saw the sign for it.  I looked up the menu and it wasn’t anything we’d had before so this was the perfect occasion to go there since it was on the way to get the furniture anyway.  We all had so much fun—my son especially with picking out and trying new things.  While it was a new experience for me as well, I can’t tell you how much fun it was to see them doing something new.  Opening a world to people is a gift, even if it’s just a new place to eat. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.