Gratitude


One of my most prized possessions is hanging on the wall by my desk as I type this. It’s a framed set of sunny yellow handprints made by my three-year-old son in November 1988. The preschool paint has faded, and you have to squint now to make out the title: “Thankful Hands.”  I looked at it today and thought about my own thankful hands. The hands I press together when I say “Namasté” to my yoga teacher at the end of class. The hands that wave and blow kisses to my little grandchildren now that we cannot touch each other. The hands that touch my husband, and lift a cup of fragrant tea to my mouth, and eagerly dig into the soft, damp earth to pull a few weeds when I return from my walks. Come to think of it, I have pretty thankful hands. And I’ll bet you do, too. I just never thought of hands that way before.

Writer Annie Lamott reminds us that, “awful stuff happens and beautiful stuff happens, and it’s all part of the big picture.” We’ve gotten the memo about the awful stuff. But the beautiful stuff is still happening, too, and maybe our hands can point us to it when our brains are too stressed to notice. If you sometimes find it more difficult to feel grateful these days, you’re not alone. It’s important to make the effort, though. As a strategy for calming the mind and lifting the spirit, an attitude of gratitude is right up there with daily exercise.

Here is the place to find everything you need to start your own daily gratitude practice: Gratefulness This is a rich website, filled with information, exercises, and much more. You might want to take your time with this one.

 
                      (Photo credit: Pat Crane)

I set out today to write a piece about why gratitude matters, and how a daily gratitude practice can help us both resist despair and anxiety, and heal and rewire our brains. But you don’t need me to tell you that. These stressful times have probably given you that memo, too.

In such challenging times, we could easily go to dark places. Let’s not. Let’s keep our equilibrium as best we can and remember that life is still full of so much good. What are you grateful for today? 

Until tomorrow, I raise my hands to you. Namasté. Be well.

Love,
Nancie/Mom/Mimi/Grandma

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Counting the Chicken Money

Image
I worked as a bank teller while I was in college. After I graduated in 1974, I went to work at a branch in a busy commercial district. This was back in the days of night deposits. One of the businesses that brought its cash to the bank dropbox each night was a fast food chicken restaurant. Each morning the tellers would count night deposits in a ritual that I can see -- and smell -- to this day. Nobody wanted to count the chicken money. We'd gather around a conference table while our manager wheeled in a big cart of night deposit bags and dumped them out before us. The heavy canvas bags were nearly identical: each fairly grimy pouch had the name of the bank stenciled across the side and a strong zipper across the top. But even though they looked alike, the chicken money bag always stood out from the rest. You could smell that bag no matter where you were sitting. And that was before it was opened. The actual money reeked. Counting the night deposits was like a game of musical c
Read more

Motivation

Yesterday I talked about trying to hold more realistic expectations for ourselves and others. I know that that's a challenge for a lot of us right now. It's a struggle for me, and I hear from many of you that you're wrestling with it, too. One of the things I hear is that some are feeling a lack of motivation. I've been told that it's hard to get even paid work done, much less personal tasks that we need or want to do. I'm also hearing concerns about getting students to do their online schoolwork. "How do I motivate my children," some of you ask, "when I'm having a hard time motivating myself?"  When you say, "I'm having a hard time being motivated right now," what I hear with my therapy ears is, "I may be struggling with stress and mood." And who would be surprised by that? The ongoing stress affects us all, and likely even more than we know. We're probably all grieving on some level, whether we perceive i
Read more

Choosing Joy

It seems a lifetime since my last post. In that time, my photographer son was arrested while on assignment to cover the protests, and I broke my left heel in several places in a freak accident with my little grandchild. More about those later. The point is that life as we know it can turn in a heartbeat, and in ways completely outside our control. We always have a choice, though, about how we respond. If anyone knows about unjust imprisonment, physical pain, or mental and emotional anguish, they would be His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet and the Most Reverend Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa. The same could be said for the late Honorable John Lewis, Member of Congress representing the Fifth District of Georgia. Between them, these three icons of grace under extreme circumstances have experienced deep personal and community pain. Archbishop Tutu grew up poor in a segregated society. Childhood polio left him with an atrophied hand, a younger
Read more

Land Acknowledgments

Image
My husband and I own a home that stands on sacred and stolen land, land once home to indigenous wildlife and to indigenous peoples. The deer and coyotes we sometimes see in our neighborhood are descended from creatures who roamed here freely before the developers descended.  On our street, October 2020 I have not yet been able to determine exactly which First Peoples lived on the land where my home sits, but the Atfilati band of the Kalapuya (Tualatins) seasonally migrated to a nearby area to fish, hunt, and forage, and the Clowella Chinooks also made their home near mine. The Portland Metro area rests on traditional village sites of the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Tumwater, and Watlala Bands of Chinook, the Tualatin Kalapuya, the Molalla, and other tribes who made their homes along the Columbia River.  Beginning with the first "settlers" in our area, the Native peoples here were nearly wiped out by disease. Territorial and, after 1859, federal policies such as boar
Read more

Weekend Edition: Holding Space for Humor

Image
These are dark and heavy times, to be sure, and there is much cause for weeping. I had a moment myself yesterday, after spending distanced time with a beloved small grandchild I cannot hug or hold. We all have griefs to bear. All the more reason, though, to keep space for humor in our lives and to look for it every day. Not to deny the pain or minimize its reality, but to strive for some balance. Here are some photographs of humor we've spotted on our recent walks in our neighborhood and elsewhere around Portland: Misspelling aside, I'd love to have this one in my yard. And for those who've forgotten Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks sketch, here it is again, complete with corny laugh track: Silly Walks This one is a repeat for this blog, but in case you missed it the first time: You probably know all about the plastic ponies hooked to the horse rings around old Portland neighborhoods. But have you seen this one? Here's one from my friend Ted, a
Read more