Today I am grateful for a new level of understanding.  I’ve carried guilt with me my entire life—guilt for making decisions for myself where someone gets hurt—all the while never considering that I was making allowances for people who didn’t consider me.  I’d find myself making plans, doing what I needed to do only to be told things like “Oh, I would have gone with you” with the undertone that I should feel guilty for leaving them out when they’ve left me out previously with no regard to my feelings.  The level of understanding is this: people choose when and where to include you, they show you what they think and feel about you with their actions, not their words.  Don’t let them manipulate and twist the reality based on what they say—you have to trust what you feel.  My direct lesson is that I am allowed to do what works for me and I don’t need to make space for people who don’t make space for me.  If I’m going to build the life that I want and love, I need to stop making space for those who want to be there when it’s convenient for them.  I am worth more than the time someone deigns to spend with me.  I am worth someone’s time, attention, affection, planning, and purpose.  And my dreams/desires/opinions are just as worth being heard as someone else’s.  For someone who has a lot to say, I’m awfully quiet in crowds.  I need to find my voice again—not let them keep me quiet. 

Today I am grateful for another trip around the sun.  I recently celebrated my 41^st birthday.  It wasn’t a big to-do or anything and that is ok.  When I turned 40, a switch flipped in me where my health became the priority.  I got myself back in line and I introduced new habits into my life, things that improved me greatly.  I learned about what I liked and what my capacity was, what I enjoyed, what I wanted to make space for, and I dug deeper into what I wanted my life to look like.  I understood it was no longer about what other people wanted and trying to find a way to fit myself in—it was about me taking the reins of my life and steering it where I wanted it to go.  When we celebrate life, it’s about the life we live, it’s about letting the potential out—celebrating is about living, doing what we need to.  So ringing in 41 meant something different.  This wasn’t a milestone year, I didn’t need a celebration—I needed to celebrate myself.  I needed to do the digging, do the work of what I wanted to do.  40 was the foundation, the turning point.  41 is the work.  41 is owning the plan, the life, the doing—and following through on it.  Set the goal, focus on it, do it–and I know I can follow that pattern because I did it to get my health back.  So I am grateful for another year and the years to come living the life I am meant to have.  It truly is a blessing.

Today I am grateful for unexpected turn arounds.  The world/universe really does surprise us when we least expect it.  I received an unexpected return of something I’d worked on a long time ago and it shifted my perspective on some things.  Sometimes the return on investment is greater than we anticipated.  I am so incredibly grateful for the opportunity to use what I had done previously to take care of some things I have in the present.  To understand that even if we are afraid of something we decide on now, the universe has ways to take care of us that we don’t always see or expect.  We all face moments in life where we are scared to take the leap, to make the choice because we don’t know how we will handle it in the future.  Fine it seems like a good idea now, but what happens when x,y,z happens and we aren’t able to sustain it like this?  But there are times we have to take that leap anyway and it turns out just fine.  I don’t know all the ways of the universe and I do struggle with trust at times—but there have been moments I’d be an idiot to say that the encouragement didn’t exist. I don’t understand the conflict between ideas at times—like if I know something is meant to happen, why do things get in the way?  But I know that at some point the answer will be clear.   

Today I am grateful for a boundary.  Something clicked in me the other night where a repeated pattern reared its ugly head—a pattern that I’ve tried to break for the last 24 years.  One that comes back every time a specific series of events happens.  Like, I trust someone, they push the boundary a little bit, I give them another chance, and they push the boundary again—and then it happens a third time and I get really angry—and then they act like they are somehow the victim or like I’ve been crazy.  It hit me that I truly didn’t care that this pattern made me look a certain way—I finally understood that if this is something that has bothered me for this long, then it is the other person who needs to stop engaging in that behavior or I need to stand firm in my boundaries—or maybe it’s both.  When people care about each other, they don’t do things to hurt someone else, especially someone they care about.  They respect us enough to know that certain things are a boundary and that they shouldn’t engage in that behavior.  So my boundary is you don’t get to say one thing and do another.  That isn’t how it works.  We work together, we respect each other, we build together—or frankly, we have nothing at all.  This is the year to turn it around—and I have no exceptions for that. 

Today I am grateful for encouragement.  Sometimes we all need a little reminder that we can do it.  That we can believe in ourselves and accomplish what we want to do.  Sometimes we need the reminder that making the right decision can be tough—and just because it’s tough doesn’t mean it isn’t right.  We are only here once on this wild ride so it’s time to find the cheerleaders—and if we don’t have them, we need to be that cheerleader for ourselves.  I’m not talking about needing constant reassurance on something—I’m talking about having the confidence to find the rooms that support us and walking away from the rooms that don’t.  Find the spaces that fill us up instead of constantly relying on us to fill them. 

Wishing everyone wonderful week ahead.