wellness

gratitude #8/10

I am grateful for my body today.

So, I started a dance class a couple of weeks ago and I am pretty crap at it. Now my brain is a perfectionist – If I’m not immediately good at something I pack up and go home, but my body is a completely different beast – it just loves to move, it loves to try and fail and try again and practice the moves while washing up, watering the garden, carrying a shopping basket up and down the aisles at Aldi… Wherever, whenever, my body loves to MOVE. And eventually this joy is contagious and I find myself laughing with total joy and abandon as I flail about enthusiastically in class, and even more when I realise that I am moving in the opposite direction as everyone else. Hahaha!

What is not to love and appreciate about this marvellous joy machine that I have been blessed with?

when I accepted it really is just over for her and there is nothing I can do about it and that I was going to be ok and probably was ok already

When my partner and I got back together after years happily apart most of my family had the shits and one of my sisters just dumped me. I kidded myself for a bit that she would get over it and then got mad and sad when she didn’t. And mad at myself for caring about it anyway. And sad with my family because they wanted us to get over it but I didn’t know how. And sometimes scared because I was going to see her at some family thing and when I did see her I always felt like I was going to be sick. This went on for years, about five years actually. And one day after practicing nonviolent communication for quite a while I actually thought to use it and I asked myself – what is it that I want from her anyway? And the answer was so clear and beautiful – love and acceptance and a little fun. And in that very same moment I knew I had all these things already – with my partner and my daughters, with my workmates and with my friends and I just felt all warm and loved up just walking to work in the morning sunshine on a daggy concrete path, with a straggly jasmine vine climbing over a crumbly wall alongside

Gratitude day 4

for the little brown dog who has trotted beside me for most of my life through years across the state across the country – valiantly I have pushed her away, stopped being so damn sensitive, drank the concrete, changed my thoughts, words, my mind… but every time I say I’m ok she nips at a heel to trip me up, brushes her damp body against mine causing the hell-rash, or pounces on me in my sleep to wake me terrified, screaming or weeping

for yesterday when I sat on the train with the water from yet another job ‘no’ leaking from my eyes wondering again what was wrong with me that I couldn’t just appreciate what I had and think of the starving children and be goddamn grateful for fs sake

for when I found her damp and smelly right in my lap. She poked her wet nose into my ear and whispered safely and she left me

for when I finally contemplated safety and what and where and who and when and why safety is and how I might as gently and sensitively as I please go about finding myself some more of that safety

for now – I spot my little friend sitting just outside the back door. I sit with her a bit, content, and throw her some scraps. She leaves them for the chooks, and stretches out in the sun, dry and warm basking