NaBloPoMo 2021:  Do Good, Kid

Some time ago a high school classmate suggested on Facebook that we all post daily gratitude for the month of November.  Many of us participated, and I liked it.  The first year of this blog, I did “November Gratitude Shorts” for 30 days, my first NaBloPoMo.  In 2019 I wrote a thank you message a day for the whole year, whether by hand, email, or in some other medium.  It was meditative and grounding.

In this month of recording my most heartfelt adulting skills for mindfulness and posterity, how has it taken me this long to write about gratitude?  I noticed the deficit about a week ago.  Maybe it seems trite?  I mean in November, blog about gratitude, meh.  It’s not that I don’t feel it.  I do feel it, deeply, every day.  And it holds me up.

I come down the stairs in the morning, in this house we bought just before Daughter was born.  It’s where the kids have grown up.  It’s messy and wonderful, I love it, and I pinch myself that I get to live here.  I go home to my parents’ house, where I grew up.  That Ma and Ba are healthy and living a happy, connected life fills me with pride and joy.  We all go to the mountains, a place of meaning and memory for all three generations now.  We have roofs over our heads, food in the fridges and pantries, funds to travel, and places to go where people love and welcome us—how could we feel anything but deep gratitude?  *sigh*

Friends.  Extended family.  Education.  Nature.  Technology.  Work.  Science.  Art.  Music.  So much, so much.

Ya.  Much to be grateful for, today and all days… Even—maybe especially—in crisis…

My prayer:  May this feeling, this deep knowing of wholeness and connection in thanks, live at the front of consciousness for us all, holding hands with love, leading us always toward one another.