I recently heard a historian giving an interview about the original Thanksgiving. She pointed out that what made the English colonists so thankful was the awful year that had come before. The Pilgrims hadn’t meant to settle on a rocky coastline with poor soil and long, frigid winters. They’d been heading to Virginia but got blown off course and landed on Cape Cod in desperation. That first winter, they lost a huge chunk of their numbers to famine and illness. Native Americans in the area had also been decimated by a smallpox epidemic. If it weren’t for assistance from Squanto and treaties with other members of the Wampanoag, the Pilgrims would have been no more than a footnote in the history books.
Gratitude List: Oranges, Etc
I used to post gratitude lists fairly regularly, along with other lists. That’s supposed to be what blogs are for: thoughts too long for Facebook, but too short or too rough for more polished forums. I’ve been in one of my shy-about-blogging phases, so here’s something to break the ice.
Great Mother, thank you for:
- Oranges
- Clean water
- My job
- Going home from my job
- Deborah, Eugenia, Kelly, Wandajune, and other friends
- Having $1.50 in change so I can buy a soda from the vending machine
- The guys I sit with in the company cafeteria
- The window next to my cubicle (I waited eight years for that!)
- Daily coincidences that show me the Universe is on my side
- Ball point pens
- Clean underwear
- Modern pharmaceuticals
- Good healthcare
- Barbara Helfgott Hyett’s workshop
- Poet friends near and far
- Jellyfish Magazine
- Oddball Magazine
- The Queer Open Mic at Fazenda in Jamaica Plain
- The people coming to my poetry workshop this Thursday
- The Boston Dyke March
- Sweet, sweet sleep
- My comfy bed
Gratitude List: Fall Allergy Season Edition
• A wide social network
• Friends and family who know the me that exists beneath the facade of social media
• An emergency room just a few minutes away from my home that provides prompt, high-quality care
• A doctor’s office that knows my history and will see me when I’m sick
• Health insurance that makes it possible for me to seek out care without breaking the bank
• Knowing that many other people in my part of the world are suffering from respitory ailments — that I’m not alone in my suffering
• The kind of job that won’t fire me because I’m sick and can’t come to work
• Zyrtec, Robitussin, Tessalon pearls, and Albuterol
• A partner who’s willing and able to drive me to the doctor when I’m too sick to drive myself
There’s more to be grateful for than this. My life is changing very rapidly right now, and the stress of those changes has no doubt contributed to my getting so sick. But for today at least, I’m going to focus on resting, healing, and getting better. And on all the positive supports in my life that make that possible.
Gratitude List
- Fuzzy wool socks for cold feet at night
- A 3:1 household ratio of blankets to humans
- Cooler weather means the memory foam in our bed doesn’t give me night sweats anymore
- We finally paid off the bed
- A doctor who reminds me that the symptoms of my illness are not moral failings, that I don’t have to suffer through them in order to be a productive member of society
- A job that allows me to work from home AND provides me with office space (now with new, improved window cube!)
- Listening to Sharon Salzberg’s audiobook Lovingkindness while taking baths
- A partner who loves and accepts me in spite of my flaws
- A community of friends who love, accept, and support me in spite of my flaws
- It’s finally frickin’ Friday
- Getting two more hours of sleep last night after a solid week of insomnia.
In Gratitude to Those Who Come to the Garden
This month, the number of people following my blog topped 500. I’d like to express my gratitude to all of you — the people who visit, the people who follow, the people who take the time to comment, to click, and to share. Writing is about communication, not just self-expression — there’s no point in doing it if it’s not reaching anyone. Here’s a Pinterest board I created just for you.
Cranky List / Gratitude List
Things that make me cranky:
- waking up feeling worse than when I went to bed
- trading one set of medication side effects for another
- feeling my body getting heavier and older
- expecting to be able to exercise the way I used to when I was 25 and at the peak of training
- days when the only thing I seem fit to do is putter around the house and take in a matinee
- Boston’s schizophrenic spring weather
- focusing on my own needs and the ways they’re not being met
- getting away from support systems that help me feel connected
- pollyanna-ish spiritual literature that tells me to just focus on the positive! and everything will be fine!
- focusing on the things that make me cranky, especially when they’re things I can’t control
Things that make me happy:
- posting cranky status updates on Facebook (and the one or two people who say they can identify)
- comparing the treatments available today to what people used to endure 50-60 years ago
- considering advances in genetic research that may make it easier for doctors to pinpoint which kinds of medication will be most effective for individuals with my illness
- friends and mentors who can say the sorts of things that snap me out of negative thinking and help me focus on what will work
- reconnecting with support systems that remind me I am part of beloved community
- focusing on how I can be of service instead of on what I can get — or what I think I SHOULD be getting
- remembering that work is a wonderful opportunity to be of service
- making moderate progress while conserving energy — sometimes this is better than exhausting myself by FIXING ALL THE THINGS
- identifying small, achievable tasks toward a larger goal — and checking them off a task list
- putting stickers next to completed items on my task lists
- remembering that all things pass — even the line in the Post Office on a Saturday afternoon
- moderate exercise
- intense exercise (in moderation)
- dancing at weddings
- professional massages
- hot tubs and steam rooms
- inexpensive (and free) self-care, like a spa day at home
- vanilla-scented bubble bath
- taking myself on an artist date
- reading 101 artist date ideas
- the unwinding feeling that comes with relaxation — in all kinds of ways, expected and unexpected. Sometimes in meditation, sometimes when I’m laying in a big bed all by myself, sometimes when I’m in a field of grass in warm weather, sometimes when I’m sitting with a cup of tea and looking at the trees as the sky fades from blue to darker blue.
- the first time in 2014 that I smell rain on unfrozen soil
Things That Make Me Happy
- Tiny dog wiggling in the back window of a car
- Going to the gym for the first time in months
- A cashmere scarf against my neck on a cold day
- 5:00 PM and the sun still high in the sky
- My family — all three of us — in the same place for the first time in years
- A house full of guests
- An empty house, tidied by my mother before she left
- The time to sit in silence with a cup of tea, looking out the window
Gratitude List
- warm floors in the morning (radiant heat on the second floor of our townhouse)
- a cat who comes when called
- a cat who’s always willing to purr for you
- that most intimate of moments when you are half-asleep next to your partner of years while the dim winter morning light filters in through the window
- the discomfort that comes from trying new things
- friends to call when winter blues set in
- austere winter landscapes, with bare tree branches and empty skies
- winter sunlight
- walking into a heated building from a wind so cold you have to take off your glasses
November: National Guilt Month
November is many things: my least favorite month of the year, one long sugar hangover between Halloween and Thanksgiving, the void into which the long evenings of autumn light become the sudden dusk of winter nights. It’s Movember, when men, women, and cars sprout moustaches to remind us that men should have shower cards too. It’s National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo for those of us too hip to pronounce entire words). It’s Grateful November. In 2010, it was my own NaPoWriMo for about four days.
All of these 30-day, month-long commitments, all of these mutually supported do-good movements are great. They’re wonderful. They’re a sign of the in-gathering that is winter in the northern hemisphere: after the expansive summer and the exhausting harvest, the drawing together of the tribe around the fire to tell stories and… tweet about how many words they’ve written.
And for a perfectionist like me, they can also be a huge set-up for over-commitment and failure. Historically, November has been the worst month for me to do just about anything but plod along and show up day by day. The body knows this very well, but the mind forgets on a regular basis.
So this November, I resolve to do everything imperfectly. I will get my ass out of bed on a daily basis — imperfectly. I will express gratitude imperfectly, sometimes with mere gestures and sometimes with more sincerity. I will write haiku and journal imperfectly. I will update this blog imperfectly–perhaps weekly, perhaps less. I will join in the Dverse Poets community when it’s reasonable for me to do so, not each and every week, no matter how many times my calendar reminds me to.
I will conduct the next two sessions of my writing workshop imperfectly, doing my best to inspire and be inspired, enjoying the unfolding relationships developing among us all– and feeling lucky to be teaching writing, something so near and so dear and so close to my heart.
Imperfectly, I will accept the blessings and the gifts each day has to give me. And I will forgive myself for my own imperfections, give myself as many breaks and second chances as I need, and relax about whether I’m doing my imperfect November as imperfectly as I would like.
Friday Five Plus Three (Gratitude Edition)
Gratitude doesn’t always come easy. Sometimes it’s a discipline, a practice. Sometimes I go through the motions without feeling inspired about it. But I do the motions anyway. Today’s gratitude list:
- daily reprieve from a chronic and deadly disease
- access to health care providers who assist when the other chronic and deadly disease rears its ugly head –I mean symptoms
- sunshine — albeit October sunshine, harsh and in short supply, still sunshine
- more clothes than I know what to do with
- fuzzy kitties who love me whether I go out or stay in
- a job that trusts me to do the right thing without breathing over my shoulder
- friends and family who call, text, and email
- a man who puts the kettle on for me every morning
Garden of Words 