I am grateful life beat me into submission, because that’s how I learned to fight with compassion instead of fury. I’m not broken, I’m bendable, and I can survive anything. Damaged goods are the best kind there are.
I don’t know what all I think about god but I think that music and good books and whatever it is that makes me feel like I’m part of something wonderful is sort of like whispers from god and I’m grateful for all of that.
I'm grateful that as life unfolds it has only got better. Not easier, but steadily more complex, difficult, interesting, meaningful and challenging. And most of all that I have been lucky enough to discover depths and layers of love I’d never even imagined, love that almost hurts.
I am grateful for how much I have fucked up. Before I fucked up, I thought I was a good person. I thought I was noble and pure. But over the course of years I fucked up. I mistook codependence for partnership. I mistook my craving to be needed and loved for altruism. I mistook the dependence I created in others for strength shared. I mistook my distance and withholding for self-sufficiency. But I fucked up, and I learned. Failure keeps me from the corrosive trap of certainty, and I am grateful for it.
I am most grateful for having the most amazing woman to be my mother. She is amazing and strong. I never had a moment when I doubted that I am loved by her and for that I am grateful.
I am grateful for my sister. My best friend. I am especially grateful for the strength she has been blessed with and the ability to find faith in herself that we all lose at times. I couldn’t be more proud of her.
And gratitude for my cat, who reminds me that laughter and naps, no matter how cliché, are still the best medicine.
I am grateful for experience itself, because it teaches two seemingly contradictory things. That I am vulnerable and fragile. That I am strong. Most of all, I am grateful for small voices that speak out into nights blanketed in darkness and say: you are enough, your life is enough, this world is enough, this moment is enough.
I am grateful for my friends, who are courageous and honest and loyal. I don’t think I could’ve wished for better ones. I am grateful for him and it just blows my mind, incredibly. I’m so thankful. For going against the crowd. For inspiration. For true emotion. For literature. For food. For simple things. For joy. For happily ever afters. For love. For life.
I’m thankful for laughter, the kind that makes your face hurt because it’s so true and full of joy. It’s honest.
I’m grateful that despite how ugly things get in this world, things have never gotten ugly enough to rob humanity of its spirit and its unflagging belief that we have it in us to be better.
In short: I’m grateful to feel grateful.
