Category Archives: gratitude

I Wish I Was Better For You

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Dear Person I Knew Before,

Looking back, I wish I had been better for you. When you knew me, I was young in the work. I was well trained and I understood the task in my thinking mind. But I had (still have) a lot to learn about relating to people who are different from me, people whose behavior I don’t understand easily, who rub me the wrong way at first.

I wonder if you felt disliked by me? I hope I was professional/amiable enough, but I know I wear my feelings on my face. My tone and words can be terse and even cold when I feel disconnection. I hope you still felt respected, attended to, even cared for. If not, I own it. I remember you because I knew it at the time–knew I was not my best with you, and yet I could not help it. I had only yet begun the inner work journey that has brought me to today.

I know so much better now. I am so much more self-aware, humble, honest, and accountable. I withhold most judgment now, unlike before. I engage with difference now in openness and curiosity, and take few things personally. I am so much more peaceful inside. Even when I get triggered these days, it’s much less intense and lasts minutes, maybe hours, instead of days. I am far better at asking direct questions to clarify meaning, calling out disrespect, and connecting better or amicably exiting a poor relationship. I don’t let things hang or fester like before.

If/when we meet again, I welcome the chance to reconnect and apologize. I want to show you how much I have learned and grown since you knew me, since I had my potentially negative impact on you. I was doing the best I could, with what I had, at that time. I still am. There is no substibute for experience and time.

Please know that my relationship with you, through its challenge and difficulty, has been the pebble in my shoe making me more mindful, more intentional. I thank you for crossing my path, showing me my deficits and calling me to address them. I hope my future relationships will show my progress, so that even if I cannot make direct amends to you, I can avoid doing similar harm to others. You have made me better.

Wishing you peace, and people in your life who show up better for you than I did. I will stay on my path, and if we meet again, I will smile.

NaBloPoMo 2023 Debrief

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*sigh* All done, my friends.

She sits back, breathes deeply, and looks around in satisfaction.
The house is no more of a pigsty than usual.
Meals were planned and cooked, laundry completed, child chaufferred, workout routine maintained (other than during travel). AND SHE GOT TO BED ON TIME MOST NIGHTS. That may have been the greatest accomplishment–the first NaBlo in 9 attempts that did not cost 30 days of sleep and physical health. WIN.
Another month of daily extemporaneous writing in the books.

Observations, Learnings, Applications

After all this time, I can finally admit and embrace that I am a Night Writer. I can put down anybody else’s advice to get up early and do it in the morning, or even during my days off. That’s just not me. All-nighters are not me, either. My ideal writing time seems to be around 9-11pm. Looking ahead, this feels like a doable schedule for the book. Like workouts, I can aim for 5 nights a week and plan ahead each weekend, so there is routine with flexibility, and long term consistency.

I feel self-conscious writing too much about myself–my own stories, thoughts, feelings, ‘musings’. Navel gazing. Who wants to read that every day? But this desire to connect my own experiences to others’, to make meaning and touch on a larger, more resonant scale–where can I start but with my own lived history? And the ‘lesson’ parts can really come across as pedantic, no? So, I can look for ways to improve my storytelling and delivery, be both personable and knowledgeable–relatable. I want the book to feel like the best clinical encounter–query, intake, reflection, suggestion, action plan, follow up–connecting, learning, empowering, and always forward moving.

Practice makes better. The words are in there, and they don’t have to be fully formed or organized before pulling them out to the page or keyboard. Like icing out of a squeeze bag, ideas and expressions will take shape depending on temperature, pressure, movement, and tip. But regardless of the conditions, output is needed. It can be reshaped later; I just need to sit down regularly and squish it out in the first place. I’ got this.

Though I chose the 30 NaBlo topics a bit haphazardly, they were all meaningful, and the order in which some of them emerged felt organic as I wrote each day. If I were to continue, I’d add curiosity, kindness, and generosity to the list. Redundant, I know. The longer I write this blog, the more times I repeat myself and refer back to pieces I wrote years ago. And it’s okay. It’s just taken me this long to convince myself that I have something useful and relevant, something timeless to contribute, a thing worth amplifying. I had to build up the confidence, make it strong and solid. Now I’m ready.

Writing a book will be different from a blog, and now I have accumulated enough of both discipline and surrender to let some good writing flow from the deeper places. An image of volcanic magma emerges–not spewing in great explosions with atmosphere-darkening ash clouds, but a slow, burbling ooze, hot a pliable, soft and layered, unstoppable yet unobtrusive, solidifying over time to create new islands, smooth and round rather than jagged, places where we can stand together quietly in wonder and explore, from whence new perspective and understanding may grow.

Many thanks to all who have followed along this month. Could the post titles have been more boring? Overall it was not my best published output, but the intent all along was to use this month as personal and public writing lab for book work prep. It feels to me like time and energy well spent, worth the effort, and work I will refer back to often. Now to find the new routine, book and blog juxtaposition/integration? A fun new fork on the writing trail, yay! Or ooo, maybe a convergence. I trust it will all work out, unfold, and emerge in good time and space. Can’t wait.

Gratitude

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Photo by Eileen Barrett, 2023

What is the opposite of gratitude? Today I think of it as taking things for granted. Because isn’t that what often triggers gratitude, when the deep meaning and value of everyday things suddenly hits us in the face, and we realize how we have not fully appreciated or reveled in any of it recently? I don’t write this to shame anybody, or to make us feel guilty for being ‘ungrateful.’ I often find contrast and comparison a helpful way to solidify an idea or learning. Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate, and to all who do not, may this day and all days bring meaning and connection anyway! Onward:

How do I do gratitude well already?
–Like mindfulness, my gratitude practice is more informal than formal. That said, it is intentional and strong. I express gratitude often and readily; I feel it more frequently than I can say, and often more deeply than words can convey. I’ve also reflected on it long and continually; an early post on this blog, one of the original thoughts I most wanted to convey at the outset in April 2015, described the relationships between gratitude, generosity, and peace. Rereading it now, I still endorse it all, and then some.

How could I do better?
–ACK. Everything that I could do better in gratitude circles back to my most difficult relationships. DAMN. I suppose we each/all have our highest walls, the greatest inner challenges–the primary work of a given lifetime. *sigh* Funny, I was moved yesterday to journal more intentionally about what I take for granted, and my gratitude needle moved some. So more of that, maybe: a regular discipline around that for which I resist gratitude. How fascinating.

How does society already do gratitude well?

Not just lip service. I have written before that Thanksgiving feels contrived to me. I feel this less now than in 2016. Many people really do take this season, and this day in particular, to reflect more deeply in gratitude. My impression is that this grateful sense also often extends through the whole holiday season. So I wonder, with annual gratitude awareness, what is the cumulative effect and benefit, if any?

How could we all do better together?

Abundance mindset.
I think it’s worth sharing again what I wrote in that post from 2015. Referring to the Zanders’ work in The Art of Possibility:
“Scarcity is when there actually aren’t enough resources to meet everybody’s needs; scarcity thinking is operating as if this were the case, when it really isn’t. Scarcity thinking at its best may foster healthy competition and innovation, and at worst, aggression, indifference, or even violence. In contrast, the Zanders discuss the notion of abundance. If we lived and operated in a world we assumed to be abundant, or at least enough for our needs, what would that look like?
“…That peace that comes with thankfulness is the antithesis of scarcity. 
“When we practice gratitude, we practice peace. We exude it. It manifests in our expressions and actions. Gratitude makes us creative, by lifting the need to hoard and compete. We come together, collaborate, look for our common passions and visions. We offer more of ourselves to others because we have faith that they will do the same. We know because they did it before—that is why we are grateful.”

Make it part of who we are.
I also referenced David Brooks’s article on gratitude that year:
“…people with dispositional gratitude take nothing for granted. They take a beginner’s thrill at a word of praise, at another’s good performance or at each sunny day. These people are present-minded and hyperresponsive.
“This kind of dispositional gratitude is worth dissecting because it induces a mentality that stands in counterbalance to the mainstream threads of our culture.
“…people with dispositional gratitude are hyperaware of their continual dependence on others. They treasure the way they have been fashioned by parents, friends and ancestors who were in some ways their superiors. They’re glad the ideal of individual autonomy is an illusion because if they were relying on themselves they’d be much worse off.
“Gratitude is also a form of social glue. In the capitalist economy, debt is to be repaid to the lender. But a debt of gratitude is repaid forward, to another person who also doesn’t deserve it. In this way each gift ripples outward and yokes circles of people in bonds of affection. It reminds us that a society isn’t just a contract based on mutual benefit, but an organic connection based on natural sympathy — connections that are nurtured not by self-interest but by loyalty and service.”
So eloquent, that man, I admire him so much.

So, I’m still not all in on Traditional American Thanksgiving. One of my life goals is still to never cook a turkey. I do not oppose gathering, reflecting, communing–I love all of these things—any time, any day, for any reason, actually. Whatever we are doing this Thanksgiving, my wish for us all is that it’s meaningful, nourishing, and fulfilling. And if not, well, we can be with that too, and I wish that we may not suffer too much or unecessarily.
Peace and blessings on you all, my friends.
So grateful for this platform and opportunity to connect.

If you’re looking for something inspirational, listen to Granted, by Josh Groban.