grateful

Enjoying Each Season

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On holidays sometimes I find myself thinking about the future; I think about my boyfriend being my husband, and us having children who see the world as a magical place. I think about the traditions we will have and how I intend for my children to look forward to seeing family and celebrating together. As much as I am excited for those days, I still am very grateful for this slow season in life.

Right now I get to live my life; In any moment I can decide to leave the house to go shopping, or grab coffee, and it’s easy. I can book dinner dates with friends without a second thought, hell I can even book trips as long as the bills are paid! I don’t want to focus so much on what I have to look forward to, and miss out on these moments that I will crave one day.

My boyfriend and I got to enjoy a nice breakfast out this morning, and now he is enjoying a nap as I write this. I am listening to some music, watching the cats sunbathe by the sliding glass door, and just enjoying this day and this present moment. I am so grateful to live this life, and I feel blessed to have gotten to a place where I feel comfort in the peace.

In the past when I had free-time, or any moments of boredom, I would feel anxious. I would feel like I needed to get up and start doing chores or leave the house and just make sure I wasn’t just sitting around. Now I can look at these moments and embrace them. I no longer feel the need to run around and get things done, instead I understand that rest and spending time with myself is where a lot of the healing comes from, and it is necessary.

When I find time alone, I have been trying to scroll less, and instead actually take time to do something that brings me joy. I’m not going to lie, sometimes jamming to music and cleaning does feel quite invigorating, but I have found other ways to spend my time as well. One example is the writing I am doing right now! I enjoy getting in touch with my thoughts and getting them out, as well as remembering the progress I’ve made and celebrating myself.

As it gets warmer out, I am excited to get back outside and doing my regular walks, which I am going to go on one here soon. I usually will listen to a podcast of some sort, but this year I also want to take walks where I am just listening to the sounds around me. I know that can be very grounding and honestly I am sure that is somewhat of a meditative experience as well- guess I will have to find out!

Either way, I am enjoying this period of my life. I always feel that it is important to realize how blessed we truly are, and I love taking time for gratitude, because I truly am living a great life. I get to wake up to the love of my life every day in a warm bed, hearing the sounds of loud cat meows and the pitter patter of their paws. Truly, I am living the life I once dreamed about, and as much as I am excited for our future endeavors of marriage and parenting, I am incredibly grateful for the life we have today. I enjoy the times we can just lay in bed and cuddle, I enjoy our breakfast dates, I enjoy when we get to travel together, and I enjoy living each moment. Thank you.

Writing It Out / Random Thoughts

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Part of me feels the need to write a love letter to myself. When I receive compliments, I am always appreciative and they make me feel loved, but in another way I feel like I detach myself from them. I try to take in their kind words and I understand what they are saying to me, but it’s almost as if I cannot apply that to myself. I have always talked about having a battle going on in my mind; sometimes I’d say it’s between “rational me” and “irrational me,” but whenever I’m having this internal struggle, I never know which one is me. As I write this out I know that sounds kind of stupid, because both of them are me, but I often feel like an imposter in my own life.

I know that most of my issue is the fact that I have been a people-pleaser for most of my life, and I still have those habits that I am working through. As I start to open up and share my opinions, I can feel myself shifting and reclaiming my power, but I still struggle to determine when or when not to say things. Now as I write this I am realizing I should probably only say anything if it is something that I feel is negatively impacting me or my mental health, that means I need to set some sort of boundary. Or I can always ask if someone wants to hear my opinion before I just share it, as sometimes people aren’t looking for that at that time, and some people really don’t care.

My thoughts are kind of all over the place right now and I just started thinking about writing this love letter to myself and I remembered that I did that somewhat recently, but that it was written in third person. I then started thinking back to a lot of my writings and poetry and whenever I am creating something, it is most often in the third person perspective. When I am writing a love letter to myself, it’s like I cannot even talk to me, I almost feel like I am hovering over me and witnessing me, but I am not attached to her(me). It’s like I dissociate when it comes to me giving myself love. Could that be because I had abandoned myself for so long by diving into everyone else’s lives? Have I been gone for a long time? Have I been present at all during this healing?

I have noticed that I am more present and have been recalling recent memories easier. Another helpful thing I am doing is writing down the good days / memories and putting them in a jar. That way, at the end of the year I can go back and see if I remember much from those times and also reflect on how wonderful the year was. I am taking active steps in being more aware in my life and I slow progress is still progress. I haven’t given up, and I have made it through everything and am still here to post my weekly blog post, so I deserve to celebrate that. Honestly, there are a lot of things I have to celebrate in life and actively taking time to acknowledge and be grateful for them is something that helps me to be more present and feel the love that I seem to detach from. Maybe I will write that love letter later on, but for now I can practice gratitude, and I invite anyone who is reading to comment something you are grateful for today-no matter how big or small. ♡

I am grateful for my health: the fact that I woke up today and am able to breathe, walk, eat, and function without any assistance or need to think about it is truly a blessing. Also having access to podcasts and books that provide important, useful information for both mental and physical health is incredibly helpful.

I am grateful for my relationship: my boyfriend and I have continued to grow together over the past decade and our communication skills and love for one another have only continued to evolve. I am forever thankful to have found my life partner at such a young age, and being able to watch him grow into the hard-working intelligent man that he is has been incredible. I am lucky to have someone who is respectful and honest, and also someone who will be the best father to our future children.

I am grateful for my friendships. I feel blessed to have so many close friends who understand how I am as a friend and still love me for me. I say that because I know I am terrible at reaching out and making plans, but I am always rooting for my friends and wishing them the best. I am also lucky that they reach out to me and make plans too, otherwise I’d likely never leave my house LOL-so thank you guys so much ♡

I am grateful for my job. I am blessed to have a job where I am able to pay my bills, I have health benefits and PTO and I am able to enjoy life. I am happy that I don’t have to work any weekends, as this is the first job I have ever had where that is the case. I also am confident in what I do, and I know I am a reliable, hard-working employee.

I am grateful for my cats. I always had cats growing up, and I am so happy that I was able to continue that into my adult life. I am lucky that they are all healthy and they are happy with their lives. Kitty cuddles and purrs are always soothing and it brings me joy knowing they feel safe and loved.

I am grateful for so many things in my life, and truly feel like a blessed woman. I have days where I feel depleted and off-center, I have days where my emotions get the best of me, but I know am always surrounded by love and support. Even if I am alone, I know that no matter how low I may feel, the strength and resilience within me does not disappear. It may be hard to remember during those times, but those heavy feelings are always temporary, and I know I will come back to feeling myself again. I have so much love to give to everyone else, but I need to focus on also directing it inward. I am someone with pure intentions and I feel that people are more connected than they think, and I plan to stand strong in my values as I continue to progress towards my goals. Even though it is rough sometimes, I am so grateful for my growth and for this life. Thank you. ♡

Thursday Thoughts

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I have been in a bit of a funk these past few days and I am sure it is because I still have a residual cough and am not feeling 100% myself just yet. I feel a lot better than I did, but I am ready to completely kick this thing out of my system. Since I’ve been feeling rough I wanted to take some time for gratitude, as life is still beautiful even if I am seeing it through the lens of a tired, sick person.

I am very grateful for tissues, especially the ones with lotion infused in them. These have been a lifesaver while I’ve been sick, as they keep my nose from getting too red and raw. Compared to the toilet paper I was using originally, these tissues are a Godsend LOL. It’s the little things sometimes!

I am grateful for doctors and medical staff, as they were able to asses my illness and do testing to rule out flu, strep and covid. I am blessed to live somewhere where I can go see a doctor same day at an immediate care.

I am thankful for my boyfriend who is always my biggest support system through everything in life. He ran out to get my more tissues and snacks, he was making sure I was drinking water and bringing me ice packs for my head when I needed them. He hates seeing me sick and is always doing what he can to make me feel better. I am forever blessed to have him by my side in this lifetime.

I am grateful to have a job that offers insurance and PTO. Although I didn’t have any to use for this particular situation, it will renew and I am grateful to have these benefits.

I am thankful to have a reliable vehicle to drive that I’m quite fond of! She (yes, my car is a girl LOL) has such good features and great speakers, and she gets me from place to place safely. I am happy to have her for this road trip I am about to venture on!

There are so many more things I am grateful for, but I have to cut this short so I can get ready to leave for work. Although it’s a couple “bad” days (which aren’t really bad, I just feel off) it doesn’t equate to a bad life. I am giving myself grace and I know that I am going to feel a lot better soon.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Rest

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There is this quote I have read before goes something like “if you do not make time to rest, your body will do it for you,” and boy did my body do that. I haven’t been at work the past two days because I have been battling a nasty virus. I was so happy to wake up without a headache today, because yesterday I had probably the worst headache of my life. I spent most of yesterday maneuvering an ice pack around my head in different positions because the pain was literally everywhere, including my neck. When I wasn’t trying to numb away the pain, I was napping to escape it. I definitely got a lot of sleep yesterday, which my body desperately needed. Today I still have an annoying cough and quite a bit of phlegm, but I am feeling a lot better now that I no longer have a migraine. I am taking the Mucinex and Flonase as immediate care recommended to me, and I am continuing to rest and hydrate.

I am honestly proud of myself for not feeling guilty about being home and taking care of myself, because that is almost always how I am. I usually get so stressed out when I am sick and I start worrying about falling behind on work and chores, but this time I truly listened to my body and let myself rest. I feel like this allowed me to heal quicker, and I am planning to go back to work tomorrow. As I had written before, I had a pretty busy weekend full of lots of events and people, and in the future I likely won’t jam pack my weekends like that again. I am a sensitive person and I often need some time to recoup from being around people and in public, and I will keep that in mind moving forward.

In the meantime, I am going to take the rest of today to rest and focus on gratitude. I feel so blessed to have my boyfriend to take care of me and things around the house while I am sick. I am also quite thankful that tissues and Aquaphor exists LOL. I am grateful to have access to over-the-counter medicines to help me, and most of all the fact that we have clean water to drink. As much as I don’t feel 100% like myself, I still want to take time to recognize all of the wonderful gifts around me, and I never want to take the present moment for granted.

Monday Morning

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Starting the week off with some gratitude. First I want to say that my intention for this week is to focus on getting my body more aligned with my mind, as I haven’t been eating the best over the weekend or the last few weeks honestly. I’m starting this morning with some yoga at home and lemon/cucumber water, and I am happy to celebrate even that “small” win!

In which case, I’ll start by saying I’m very grateful for that win this morning and the fact that I am up early enough to be able to stretch and even write up this short blog post! I promised myself I’d get up early, and I did!

I am very grateful for this blog. I started this years ago and I have been better and better about writing it in weekly and I am happy that I started this when I did, and I am excited to keep it going!

I am thankful for my boyfriend, as he truly makes my days better. He always makes me laugh and makes me feel loved, and I admire the mutual respect and support we have for one another.

I am grateful for my job. I am lucky to have a job that I don’t hate, that has PTO and insurance, and allows me to pay my bills and still be able to enjoy life. I also don’t work weekends which is something I’ve always wanted!

I am grateful for my three beautiful cats! I always grew up with cats and I’m so happy that we have our babies at home who love us and bring us joy. Kitty purrs and cuddles always put me in a better mood.

There are so many other things I am grateful for, such a podcasts, books, great friends, sunrises/sunsets, days with minimal traffic, iced coffee, the fact that my car has heat so I. can be warm on my way to work when it’s only 14 degrees out. I could go on and on, but instead I’m going to get back to some stretching before I go to work.

Have an incredible Monday and great week ahead!

Gratitude Check

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On a quick break and that calls for some gratitude! Feel free to list what you’re grateful for today in the comments 🙂 Let’s make the rest of the day a good one!

1- I am grateful for my health. It is a blessing to be able to walk, eat, talk, use the restroom, and complete daily tasks without the need of assistance.

2- I am grateful for my boyfriend/our relationship. I’m blessed to have a life partner who is hard-working, respectful, caring, and overall an incredible person to be around. I feel so safe and loved, and I’m happy we have great communication skills and have continued to grow together throughout the years.

3- I am grateful for our home. I am blessed to have a roof over my head and have everything I could ever need within the walls. Clean running water, heat/AC, appliances, a bed… truly we are so lucky to have all of these things and they’re easy to take for granted.

4- I am grateful for my job. I am lucky to have a job that allows me to pay my bills and live life as I’d like. I am happy to have insurance and PTO, and I am also so grateful to not work weekends!

5- I am grateful for books and podcasts! It’s so amazing to me when people can take their ideas and thoughts and organize them in such a way that leaves an incredible impact. I love when I read something or hear something that just blows my mind and changes my whole perspective on things. Also the fact that people write/podcast to help others is truly beautiful!

I have to get back to work, but I just wanted to take a few minutes to check in and remind myself how great life is! Hope everyone has a great day!

2022 Progress Report: Proud and Grateful

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As the year slowly comes to a close, I am looking forward to continue my healing into 2023. I have learned so much about myself over this year, and I am honestly very proud of my growth. I think back to when my mother had her stroke in February, and how instead of sitting and worrying about if or when she would have another one, I instead turned to gratitude. I was grateful that she is still here, and she can function normally and on her own; she is truly blessed, and I feel the same way. If this were to have happened a few years ago, I would have spiraled for probably months, just riddled with anxiety. I am proud of the fact that I find it easier to turn to gratitude during tough times.

I also am grateful that I am getting better at communicating when I am bothered by something. A few months ago, I was able to have a conversation with a close friend about something that I felt like could have been confrontational or maybe even hurtful. Although I was anxious about it, I was able to clearly communicate my intentions and thoughts, and because she is a good friend, I felt heard and understood during that conversation! I am proud that instead of just being quiet about it and building up resentment, I decided to speak up for myself and discuss my feelings. As someone who has avoided conflict and kept quiet her whole life, that one single act felt like it broke a huge barrier for me, and for that I am proud of myself.

Throughout the year I’ve struggled with judgment; truly it’s been me judging myself for judging others, and then realizing that those judgments I had towards others were actually the judgments I had towards myself. I had read about that in a book, and I’ve also heard it on podcasts before, but it really clicked this year. Although there have been a lot of hard truths to swallow, it has also been calming in a way to release that urge to control or “rescue” others. In reality, I only have the power to control or “rescue” myself, and that is what I will continue to focus on.

I am so grateful to have access to therapy and to have found such amazing podcasts that I enjoy listening to. I also am happy that I started reading more books again this year, and I plan to read even more in 2023. I plan to dedicate time to myself each day, even if only for one minute on some days, because I deserve that love and attention from myself. I plan to be authentic and honest and speak up for myself whenever needed, and I plan to be unapologetic about setting healthy boundaries. I am planning to be less busy and live calmer and slower; after living with a dysregulated nervous system for most of my life, I want to do my absolute best to try to regulate it.

2023: More connecting with nature, less connecting with technology. More reading books, less scrolling through Instagram. More time doing what I love, less wasting time doing things that don’t align with me. More pausing and slowing down, less rushing and stressing. More focusing on my values and goals, less judging and doubting myself. I am doing only what I feel is best for me, and I won’t feel guilty about it.

Thanksgiving 2022

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I am grateful for another year of growing and learning about myself. I am so blessed to have a loving, supportive life partner who lifts me up, and who makes me feel seen and understood. I am grateful for the genuine friends who cheer for me while I cheer for them. I am thankful for my family, whether near or far they always make me feel loved. There are so many people in my life who truly mean so much to me, and I am forever grateful for everyone.

When it comes to me and my current goals, I am focusing on growing and striving for happiness in my everyday life. As I’ve said before, practicing gratitude has been very helpful in keeping a more positive perspective and attitude. I am working hard to practice the art of letting go and realizing when I am worrying about things beyond my control. I am also focusing on trusting myself and my intuition, and not feeling guilty for setting boundaries or speaking my mind.

Everyone else in the world has no problem speaking their opinions, so why do I silence mine? Especially when I feel that those with good intentions and empathy should be speaking out more. In his podcasts, Jay Shetty often mentions a quote by Martin Luther King Jr: “Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.” I am taking this time for me to get organized in my own thoughts for my own inner peace, because I deserve to be at my best, just as my loved ones around me deserve me at my best.

Present and Happy.

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As I sit at my kitchen table with my chamomile tea, and I listen to Taylor Swift’s new album “Midnights” for the first time, I am feeling both nostalgic, yet very present in this moment. I can think back listening to her album “Speak Now” and how I felt when listening to certain songs. The crush when listening to “Enchanted,” the new crush fantasizing about acting out her song “Speak now,” but now looking at my life in this present moment and it being better than I could have dreamt.

I live with the love of my life in the beautiful townhome that we bought together, we both have jobs that allow us to pay our bills, save, and still enjoy our lives. I have been able to get the help I needed for my mental health, and I am enjoying the healing journey every day. Although I still have rough days (I did just recently), I am much more confident, and I see myself so differently than I did before. It honestly breaks my heart to look back and think about how much I hated myself and my brain. I would constantly fight back against the anxiety and take out my frustrations on the one I loved the most. I had so much anxiety around money and my control issues were overtaking me, and instead of letting that be my life, I recognized that I didn’t have to feel like that for the rest of my life.

I feel so blessed that I have the ability to afford going to therapy, and I am also glad I was able to try different medications that helped to calm down my brain enough to allow me to do the work. Now don’t get me wrong, I am still doing the work every single day. We are human beings with emotions and outside events that can impact our personal worlds, and it is completely normal to have bad days; what I find important is that we try to remember how we strong we truly are in those moments. We have gotten to this very moment, which means all of those times where we thought our world was ending, or we were never going to get through that rough time, we were wrong- we can truly make it through everything.

I still have times where I struggle with stressing over to-do lists, and I still get overwhelmed when I have more than one event/large task in a day. I still have to work on communicating my thoughts and accepting the fact that not everything I say will always be received well by everybody. I still have to constantly check-in with myself and see if I am in alignment with what I want to be, and if I am honest, I still do things that I know I don’t want to be doing! I still eat unhealthy food, and I don’t have a consistent writing or workout schedule, but I am still getting up every day and working toward a healthier future for myself, and I know that I will develop these habits with time. I am just proud that I have been able to learn how to give myself grace along the way, and I am slowly getting better at not beating myself up. I catch myself in negative self-talk, and I remind myself that I am human.

I am blessed to have a life partner who has been so patient and supportive along the way. I have a love I have always dreamed of, and I am so happy that our future children will grow up in a home where they can see true love and respect. Considering the home environment I grew up in, I feel even more lucky to have the relationship I have today. We have mutual respect for one another, we support one another’s goals and always try to see where the other person is coming from. I love how well we communicate, and how our love has only grown stronger over the last eleven years. We make sure that we are growing together and still focused on our future together, because we both want this forever.

I am grateful to have good friends in my life who are supportive and always cheering me on. I am very lucky to have a few close friends who I know will always listen to me and not judge me. I also am grateful for the fact that they all understand that I won’t always want to hang out, but that it is nothing personal, I just love my alone time and often feel like I need it. I feel like I have many good people in my life and I do my best to make sure they know I love them. Life is short, and it is important to tell the people you love that you love them.

Overall, I am thankful for the life that I have today at 27. I feel like I am finally living my life for myself, and not for those around me. I feel like I have broken away from my people-pleasing habit, although I know I still have to work on speaking my mind even if it may cause a disagreement, but I am accepting of the fact that my healing is life-long, and that I get to choose how I view my life. I can choose to see all of the negative and go back to self-destructive patterns, or I can continue to focus on my goals and give myself grace along the way to them. I am proud of the woman I am today, and I am happy to be here writing this tonight as I enjoy this new Taylor Swift album. I appreciate all who read this far, and I hope you too are giving yourself grace in your journey of life.

triple word score (in tea)