Finding Gratitude

You know some days it seems as if everyone is telling you what you did wrong or expressing their displeasure with you. It starts to weigh on you like a heavy wet blanket, blocking out all the light you need to see.





Today I received a letter from the mother of a special needs child that started me on a mission to lift the blanket that was trying to entrap me. It started like this:


'Hi Barbara,


First and foremost I want to say thank you. Since meeting you last year, you have continued to make me feel supported and given me guidance and I cannot express how much that means to me as a mother trying to make things work for my sons in a world that most of the time does not understand them...'


It came out of left field, and into my 'inbox' today as I was slightly sulking over a recent project that did not take off as I had envisioned. The words humbled me and reminded me of my own gratitude: for my own children's abilities, and for the families, people & children I work with who I learn from each day, just as much as I am teaching them. The note continued:


"... You truly give moms like me hope that someday all of our kids will be seen as they are, and not as they are not. There are few people in my boys lives that see them just as they are and not as 'SPD', 'fidgety' and 'oversensitive'...seeing the photos [on your website] again took me back to moments when they are just being kids...Thank You so much for sharing your gifts with us."


Gratitude seems to come when you least expect it and from where you never expect it from. It has lifted me out of a funk more times than I can remember, and I don't mean so much the receiving of gratitude...I mean the giving of gratitude. This letter made me smile, and I felt lighter and less frustrated.

So I when I finished reading I took a walk in the woods nearby and as I did I made a mental list. A list of all the people I have gratitude for. Its easy to come up with a dozen or more off the top of my head-those are the ones who I love, or who have loved me and encouraged me and helped me, and are easy to list. Like my kids, my family, the health of all of those I love. But also the ones who have hurt, used, betrayed or just plain irritated me-those were the ones that were harder to appreciate. It took some doing, but they were added to the list as well. (There is a lesson in every interaction, no matter how uncomfortable it may be. My yoga teacher used to tell me that if an irritating hurtful person is in your life, there is something you still need to learn from them or them from you.) The list got longer as I walked, and added more and more people to the list. People I know, people I remember but do not know, people who are no longer here and people from long ago.


Then, I added experiences: places, events, ideas, memories and material things. Before I knew it I had walked for 2  1/2 hours. The list is quite long and still growing. Each person, event, memory, emotion I remembered as I walked among the trees I honored by breathing my gratitude back to them.


The letter and my Gratitude Walk reminds me of a project I did several years ago, with the children in an after school Yoga Club. A Gratitude Treasure Box.


To make one is simple: I had each of the children bring in a shoe box. We covered them with glue & wrapping paper-(the lid too) and decorated them with Initials, names, trim, beads and jewels. (I wish I had thought to take a photograph of the boxes-they were so creative! )

Then I had each child write a positive note to each one of the other children. I wrote notes for them too.

Each week, we added tokens, encouraging words, more notes, accomplishments, pictures from magazines, seashells, rocks, stickers etc. to the boxes. The idea was to create a Treasure Box of positive thoughts & gratitude for them and by them, to remember to always show their gratitude & to know how much they are loved always and never alone, especially when things in their young lives got rough.

When the last class of the year came, as I handed out their certificates, they presented me with a plain shoe box. Inside was a hand made card, signed by all of them, there were notes, drawings, and tokens of their gratitude for teaching them during the year. They had secretly made the box for me (and did not decorate it as they wanted it to be a surprise.)  I still have the box and all the items inside, lovingly placed there, (in secret,) by each student. Kids are truly amazing.

I think I may need to get out my Gratitude box today-maybe move the items into a larger one, to include the letter I got today, along with the stonesI picked up on my walk as well as the long list I made.



As it turns out, I've got so much more to put in that box!







With Gratitude,
 
 
Barbara