This week here in the U.S., we celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday, and I turn my attention more fully to gratitude. I’d like to reshare a piece of writing I wrote nearly two years ago. Even though life has, in many aspects, moved on from what it was then, I know that tapping into a profound sense of gratitude, often for the simplest things – the late autumn sun, the ability to put pen to paper, the breath rising in my body – can always fill me with more than enough.
Fierce Gratitude
After my friend died unexpectedly from a stroke 15 months ago, I wandered through my days in a fog, not able to focus on the tasks in front of me.
If I wondered if she’d been trapped inside her body unable to speak to us for that week, I’d think of her as a prisoner, stuck there in the hospital bed while her worried friends commented about the swelling in her legs, a phantom movement in her hand, her yellow nail polish.