Today I am grateful for lessons in presence.  Oh, this has been a huge on so many of my gratitude posts over the years but I am continually reminded (and grateful for the reminder) on how important presence is.  I am hyper aware of the things I need to be doing in order to move forward. I am also aware that there are so many things I want to do that my attention is far too scattered 70% of the time.  I spend (and spent) so much time wishing for things to be a certain way that I lost sight on how to make them that way.  I lost sight of how to just be.  Even the times I’m aware of it and working toward that presence, I still find myself feeling like I need to be doing something else.  The realization came over me the other day that the constant going isn’t serving anything.  It’s still—after all this time and awareness and reminders to myself—it is still just movement.  I may be widening the circle but I am far from making the amount of progress I want to be.  So.  The answer is focus and presence, but I want to talk about this from a grounding perspective—and perhaps a bit of ADD/ADHD.  There are times presence is simply going to mean doing one thing at a time.  Other times it is going to mean doing nothing.  Other times it will mean focusing on our breath.  There are times we will have to navigate 30 tasks and need to prioritize them quickly—so we will need to be present in different places at once and then decide the focus where we are.  We can only ever do one thing at a time.  Stick with it long enough to see progress, not just movement.  We can’t control the outcome of so many things, but we can control how we look at it—and that requires being where we are.  It isn’t about how much we do, it’s about how we do it.    

Today I am grateful for the reminder that life goes on—and feeling life again.  My Aunt’s cat played for the first time since we got him here in September.  On the surface that doesn’t seem like a big deal—wow, a cat played with their toys.  My Aunt died in September and I think I’m allowing myself to feel the actual emotions behind it.  It was so shocking—one of the most shocking deaths I’ve experienced in my life, actually—that I believe I’ve repressed so much of what I was feeling at her loss.  The initial surge of shock, yes, then the anger.  And now I’ve been feeling the sadness of it, the actual loss.  I hate the fact that she is gone.  When we got the news she had passed, we knew there was a cat in her home—I’d never met the animal, none of us had.  The condition of her house was so hard to deal with, we couldn’t find the cat at first.  He’d been alone in that home without food since she died, so when we were notified and allowed in the house, we left food for him.  He ate it but we he wouldn’t come out for us.  He’d been living with only my Aunt so he had never met kids, men, other cats, or dogs—she was relatively reclusive at the end of her life.  We brought the cat home and it was a journey to get him to trust me and then to work with him to be with my son, husband, and the other cats and our dog.  He made slow and steady progress but he was always cautious, still hiding during the day, shying away from my husband and son still.  Over the months he started to come out and join us—quickly peeking into the loft and then running back in the room until he started sitting in the corner watching us. Then he decided to move into my room and he slept with me at night. Then he came down stairs with me to my office.  Then he started eating downstairs in the morning.  Then he was ok being downstairs when my husband was home.  Then he started eating dinner downstairs.  And now he greets us all when we come home.  And today, he played with his toys, the toys I brought from my Aunt’s house for the first time since he’d been here.  I’m sure he still misses her—I know I do.  But I will do my best to give him the love he needs, and help him live his best days with us.         

Today I am grateful for getting out of my head.  Perhaps a continuation on presence, but I want to speak more to the idea that sometimes we need to do different things to be where we are.  The mind is such a powerful tool that we can be anywhere and everywhere all at once even if our feet are firmly planted right where they are.  We’ve been engaging with some new people, building a friendship with them, and we’ve been doing new things together.  We’ve also been working on our basement without breaking the bank.  And working full time, and working on my side projects, and spending time together, meal prepping, and working out.  So I’ve been spiraling.  Regardless, I realized we were in a bit of a tight spot for a few things this weekend and whatever it was in me, I couldn’t bring myself to get upset.  Like, my normal reaction would have been to absolutely freak out, but I didn’t feel that this time.  I told my husband to go out, try and have fun and I wanted to have a “mommy/son date” with our little (who is seriously not so little anymore and I’m freaking out that he’s already 8).  I helped my husband with a few things and he went and then I told my kid to stop playing his video game. We made different flavored popcorn, cut up apple slices with caramel and cool whip, had some healthy cookies, and some mint chocolates—and he even got to drink a pop.  We watched a movie together and we tried to play a game (it was getting a bit late for our attention span at that point) and then we watched a baking show together guessing what was cake (FYI so much fun).  We cuddled on the couch together and laughed—and I didn’t feel an ounce o stress.  He fell asleep around 11:30PM right after my husband got home, I read a little bit, spent some time with my husband and then went to bed.  It was perfect.     

Today I am grateful for really good books.  Ok, I’ve always loved books.  I’ve always made time to read books—perhaps not as much time as I would like, but I’ve always carved out some time in the day to read, even if it was five minutes.  I’ve transitioned to a few different genres recently and I’m reading a series right now that has made me laugh out loud again.  I love the artistry, the pacing, the context, the content of story telling.  I have immense respect for well-told stories and even more so when they are literally engaging.  I mean, there are fun stories to read, for sure, and there are very well written works—but there is nothing like that push to the limit of both engagement, immersion in a new world, belief in the characters, and going on a journey with them.  Right now I’m reading a really well written one.  It’s a fantastic fantasy/villain/adventure/strong female lead/redemption and slight romance, and it has made me feel all the feels so to speak.  (Kudos Hanna Nicole Maehrer).

Today I am grateful for inspiration.  As we start the week we need to remember that everything is mindset and energy.  We decide, we make moves, we explore, we try, and we try again.  I love the inspiration that comes from seeing people engrossed in their craft and their passion.  It is truly awe-inducing to see someone so wrapped up in what they are creating you can see they are in another realm.  It’s inspiring because it makes it so tangible that we can do the same.  We can each create our own world, filled with the things we love, filled with purpose and joy.  When we have that level of focus or dedication, the world opens up.  I will talk a bit later this week (or next, I haven’t decided yet) about having a focus/theme in this life, an overarching premise that guides us.  Instead of trying to make everything fit, when we have the theme, we see how those pieces automatically fit.  There is no force.  I see people doing the things I’m trying to accomplish and I used to be jealous.  Now I realize that these things wouldn’t be drawn to my life if I wasn’t somehow capable of doing them, if I wasn’t on the same frequency to have the capacity to do it.  I am grateful to find that and appreciate that and do it for myself as well.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.