on gratitude & grief

Gratitude. I used to think I knew what this was. Then I started to practice it.

Now I can’t un-know it. And I don’t ever want to.

I’m grateful for this day. I’m grateful for this page. There was a time when I didn’t think I would ever make it here — to this place of lightness, of love, of living well.

I’m grateful this place brought me here, to the end of these pages that are now filled with words on such things.

There are some things we will never understand. There are some things we will never make sense of.

I won’t understand why such beautiful people prematurely lost their lives. I won’t understand why a building with hundreds of people inside collapses. I won’t understand how one relationship can be so different than another. I won’t understand how someone’s feelings can be so different than one other’s. I won’t ever understand the magnitude of the grief some people are faced with.

That’s okay. I don’t have to.

I don’t have to in order to feel grateful for being given the blessing of each day. I don’t have to in order to feel grateful for my loved ones and for the relationships I do have, for the ones I have living and breathing beside me and watching over above me.

I don’t have to in order to practice gratitude for everything. Because while we may not feel “grateful” for some things, like death, or tragedy, or heartache, we should see that they gave, or give, us something to be grateful for.

There are some things we will learn from. There are some things we will grow from. There are some things we will hurt from.

Gratitude helps make sense of that.

Forever grateful,

o&o