Gratitude

     I recently finished reading Ten Mindful Minutes by Goldie Hawn (with Wendy Holden). It is about Mindfulness and its endless benefits to our well-being.
     In the chapter on gratitude, she described a two-week study in which a group of students were divided into three groups. The first was the control group and made no changes, the second was asked to record five blessings each day for the two week period. The third group was asked to record five hassles. At the end of two weeks, the blessings group were "happier and healthier" and when re-interviewed after three weeks, the blessings group remained "significantly more optimistic about the upcoming school week and satisfied about school and their lives in general". (p. 131)
     Needless to say, I immediately stole Ms. Hawn's idea (and terminology: "Vitamin G"), and instituted a Gratitude Journal in my classroom. I introduced it briefly on Friday morning and by Friday afternoon, there were six entries, expressing gratitude for health, home, family, pets, hobbies, peace, and eyeglasses.
     This all made me reflect on the power of gratitude in my own life and so at 4:00 am this morning when I couldn't sleep, I went looking through my journal written during a time when gratitude was hard to come by. I was living in Vancouver and caring for my partner Shan during her stem cell replacement therapy (bone marrow transplant). 
     I sank into my own words and wrapped myself in the feelings they created. And when I could close the journal and put aside the feelings, I was overcome by the blessings in my life. Revisiting that dark time, I was filled with gratitude. 
      Suddenly, sleeplessness and work stress and money worries were irrelevant.
      As I read the journal, I was struck by the role writing played in my self-care during a difficult time. The next time I get my hands on the Vitamin G Journal at school, I will record my immense gratitude for writing. It has always been a balm for me. I believe it always will.
     I've chosen three entries to share here. Please accept them as a way into your own gratitude.

January 1, 2011

     Happy New Year. The sun is shining and that helps but I am not feeling so great today – woke up feeling lousy at 7:00 am. I thought I’d get up and do some writing before Shan woke but I’d only managed to make my coffee by the time she was up. She wanted to have breakfast and watch a movie. When she asks if I want to do something, I have a hard time saying no.

     I want to write but I also want her to have a good first day of the year. Now she is on the phone with a friend so I have some time to myself but it is only enough to write a journal entry. What I want is the apartment to myself for 2 or 3 hours. What I really want is 2 weeks at Hedgebrook to write and write and write. I am going to try to do that next year. I think maybe in October of this year or in the spring of 2012. I will do it though.

     It has been quite a year. It’s been about Shan’s health right from this time last year. In fact, I was buying a pair of earrings for her stocking in the hospital gift shop a few weeks ago and realized that I had done a fair chunk of her stocking shopping at the Campbell River hospital gift shop last year. That’s enough. Next year, I want to be writing in my January journal and noting that the whole year got less and less medical and by the New Year, it was all just a memory. All the appointments and doctors and nurses and pills and blood work and the Hickman line and the CT scans and the waiting rooms and the thermometers and blood pressure cuffs and . . . .
     Perhaps a year from now I will read this and remember how hard it has been – remember with some surprise because it has all slipped quietly below the surface and disappeared. Perhaps I will be all caught up in some silly trivial thing. Sounds luxurious, like having nothing to do but read a frivolous and entertaining novel.
     But truly, I hope not. I hope I will remember how grateful I am to have this healthy amazing body of mine, this strong spirit. I hope it will be vivid in my mind, this great joy to still have her here with me. I hope I will look at every blue sky all year long and remember this one, which heralded the restart, the empty page, the clean slate. Most of all, I hope every blue sky this year will remind me that like today, what I feel is less important than what I know. My heart is a little heavy, my soul a bit darker blue than what I see above me, but I know . . . unshakeably, I know, that I am well, that life is a gift, that joy is a practice.
     If I could manipulate the universe, I would defer every blessing reserved for me in 2011, have them all slip past me and fall on Shanny. 
     There is no blessing to equal that of being loved by the one you love.
 

January 25

     Something is better today. Not the weather – still sickly grey and damp. Not the atmosphere in here – Shan woke up almost sobbing with pain. Not my fatigue factor – I had the worst sleep and have been up since 4:30. So what is different?

     I wrote this morning. That’s the difference. Wasn’t spectacular prose; wasn’t a new idea. I just wrote 10 pages of a first draft. That’s all. And that made me think about another project. And that made me go and dig up my notes for 5 Days and read them and now it’s 11:30 and I feel like I can face the hospital today.

 

 

February 11

     Honest to god, I was just trying to move the recycling bin icon on my desktop screen and my journal folder got itself out of the document file and opened itself and here I am. That is a bit spooky but sadly, also indicative of the level of technocraziness that happens with me that makes everyone else think I’m a liar. I really didn’t DO anything. I was nowhere near the files. Anyhooo . . . on the other hand, it’s just the universe telling me to write.

     It’s 6:00 am and I had a pretty decent sleep last night – was in bed by 10:30 and don’t remember being awake much at all.
     I decided to get up so I might get a little writing done before the bronchoscopy this morning. She can’t eat breakfast again and she has nothing at all in her tummy, having puked everything up just before bed last night. Poor thing. She sleeps more than she’s awake right now and she just isn’t having any fun at all. We rarely even get out for a walk. And this week has been 5 out of 5 days at the hospital which exhausts her.
     We’re fast approaching the 6 month mark of how long we’ve been away from home. She seems to be getting worse all the time. I’m terrified to take her home in case there is an emergency but I don’t see how she can start to feel better until she can sleep in her own bed, pet Jed, sit on the beach, be surrounded by her friends. This feels like a giant catch 22 and I know she feels as caught as I do. We don’t even know the doctor on Cortes – haven’t even met him. How must that feel for her when she is known here. On Tuesday, Shan told the doctor she was still struggling with her appetite and on Wednesday, the nutritionist showed up at our daycare appointment armed with all Shan’s latest info and a sheaf of ideas to help with appetite, etc. When we go in, they say things like, “So you called in last night . . .” or whatever. They all keep up to date on everyone. When we walk onto C6, the theme from Cheers plays in my head: Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name. Too bad it’s a hospital ward.
 

 

Monica is the author of "Thanks for chucking that at the wall instead of me."