I was already having a great day. I’d had a morning zoom meeting that went really well and left me feeling very encouraged. I had a series of productive meetings and calls after that. It was a beautiful, albeit cold, day and I was planning a delicious dinner.
I had just picked up my youngest from preschool and while the older two were off somewhere else in the house, I had a quiet moment to sit with my little one in my lap while she finished off her veggies from her afternoon snack.
I held her and watched her while she quickly and quietly chomped each of her carrot sticks. It was a very mundane moment, but I was only feeling how lucky I was to be holding her in that moment and just enjoying her presence, and being fully present with her. I wasn’t thinking about anything else. I wasn’t rushing around to get dinner made, or running through a mental list of all the things I still had to do that evening. I was just being, and so was she.
In moments like those, it feels like everything that I can possibly feel grateful for is converging all at once and it’s so big. How is it possible that I am here? That we are here, having this experience? And the very reality that I am here having this experience is enough to feel immensely grateful.
If life has taught me anything, it’s that I am so grateful that I have the capacity to feel and to experience life. Even when those those feelings and experiences are heavy and difficult and I wonder, in the moment, if I’ll ever come out of it. In those moments, I go back to gratitude for the simple fact that I can feel it and experience it. And even more gratitude for knowing that I have always lived to see the other side of grief.