Today I am grateful for understanding the breakdown.  Much of my life has felt like trying to hold sand in my hands, trying to keep it all together while all the pieces fall from between my fingers, slipping away.  I tried to do so many things all at once, all over the place, totally unrelated but with the same goal in mind.  Essentially trying to ride both sides of the rail where it splits.  Truth be told I thought I was doing really well.  I thought I had it under control and thought as long as I took small steps through each process I wasn’t going to break, as if I could ease myself into stretching the miles between the goals.  I never learned my lesson and I certainly didn’t practice what I preached.  I continually said yes to everything, piling on and on to the load, and no one offered to help.  I mean, that’s fine in degree because I was the one who said yes, so I get it.  No one should have to commit to something they didn’t agree to.  But there was another weight that came with that pressure (self-induced or not) and that was loneliness.  The more I took on and the more people were involved, I had hoped that we’d be able to tackle somethings together but what ended up happening is people found a way to simply add their “things” to my pile and walk away without even looking back.  It wasn’t sustainable and the inevitable happened—I broke.  I broke over and over again, so stubborn where I would rebuild myself only to fall into the same habit.  But now there are some pieces that won’t go back together.  There are some pieces I don’t WANT to put back together.  And I’m still putting them together on my own.  Relationships aren’t about one person carrying the burden while the other gets whatever they want with no cares in the world.  Our job is to ease the pressure by approaching things together and it wasn’t until total breakdown that I looked at the relationships around me to discover the punching bag I allowed myself to be.  So for that particular breakdown I am grateful.  I was lonely with people and struggling to keep my head above water.  I’d rather be lonely and be able to save myself rather than stay in water where I will surely drown.  At least on my own I have a chance at survival and a chance to find the right people to reciprocate what I’m giving.     

Today I am grateful for persistence.  Look, I’m the first one to admit that I haven’t gotten as far as I want to when it comes to achieving my goals and I am 100% aware of my responsibility in that.  There is no reason or way to be a victim of circumstances we put ourselves in.  The point of this particular piece of gratitude is that no matter what has or hasn’t panned out in my life, no matter how many directions I’ve been pulled in, no matter how many times I’ve been turned around, there has always been a singular flame that still pushes me forward.  There is that constant ember that won’t die.  I have moments where I legitimately think that letting it go out would be the easiest thing to do—perhaps even the smartest.  I never do it.  There is some force within all of us that keeps us going.  It keeps us moving in those moments when we want to throw in the flag.  The beauty in persistence is that if we keep going, we keep possibility going and eventually we will find where we are headed and the directions all make sense even if we had to take a few detours.  So as they say, rest if you need, but don’t quit.  Persist.  Keep going.

Today I am grateful for growth.  Growth looks different for all of us and the ingredients necessary for growth are different for all of us. What motivates one may paralyze another.  What’s needed for one may not be needed by another.  We spend a lot of time avoiding certain things—the human brain is wired to protect itself and to take the path of least resistance so given the option to do what we know versus learn something that seems more challenging, we will choose to go with what we know every time.  Sometimes those things we avoid in life keep showing up until we have no choice BUT to face it and it’s interesting the impact that happens when we face those things we don’t want to.  Sometimes the biggest change is spurred by simply accepting reality.  That doesn’t mean we can‘t have an eye on the future—we need to have an eye on the future—but to get on the right path to where we need to go and sometimes to even find the path, we need to face what’s there.  Once I understood the differences in my experience versus other’s, it made me realize that even if we were at the same event, people can walk away with an entirely different lesson or outlook.  That’s their outlook and it isn’t up to us to make their lesson ours or make them see the experience through our lens.  Sometimes growth is a slow evolution and sometimes it happens in an instant.  Either way it changes everything.  We just need to open our eyes and see the light.     

Today I am grateful for coming into a beautiful season.  Even if this season means something different to those I love, it still means what it means to me. It’s still an important part of my life and holds a huge part of my heart. The memories I have from both sides of my family, the traditions as had in our own home growing up, the traditions I’ve started in my home with my son, it all means something very special to me.  It doesn’t have to mean the same thing to everyone else because it means so much to me.  My heart is full and I love sharing the love I have for this time of year with those I love.  It isn’t about how I feel necessarily—it’s about how it feels to share that with them.  This year looks different than it has before and it will continue to change as time moves on.  I have to accept that.  But I can still find my meaning and my joy in it and that isn’t contingent on anyone around me.  That’s on me and what matters to me.  I may have to change a few things moving forward and reprioritize but I don’t have to give up how I feel.

Today I am grateful for finding happy.  This has been one of those off putting roller coaster years in respect to what I planned and how I thought things would be turned out completely opposite.  It’s been disorienting on so many levels because what I had in mind didn’t come to pass and the effort I put in seemed to fall flat.  Plus I spent a majority of the year in mental chaos with all the work we’ve done around the house and the changes I’ve made in my 9-5.  I don’t regret any of it, it was all necessary and timely and it has proven to be what I needed on so many levels.  But it was the shedding of what I knew and we are in a very different place than we were before.  This coming year I want to focus on making sure those I love are secure and taken care of and that we have a set goal in mind for what we want to accomplish.  I want to make sure we know what we are doing and what we want moving forward—we need clarity.  We had a lot of hard lessons this year about those we can trust and who we should let into our lives moving forward and that isn’t something we are taking lightly.  There’s a lot we’ve had to recover from and we will need to keep that in mind.  Things change quickly and unpredictably at times and we will no longer build our plans on what others say we should be doing.  We tried to be accommodating and we ended up losing sight of who WE were and what we wanted for OUR family.  We almost let them convince us that we were wrong for protecting our family.  We will find our place and we will keep our goals prioritized with our vision on mind. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.