Gratitude for the endings

Photo by Julian DeSchutter for Death to the Stock Photo

Grateful I got to write my column for 12 1/2 years and grateful it is ending now. And that I got to do the ending well, that it taught me how to find my voice and practice and get better and fast. And that I learned to get more confident at it and stopped worrying if I was good enough. 

​Grateful the Cambridge/Boston era taught me its lessons/my lessons. All my schooling there — literature, film, screenwriting. Grateful for the education. Grateful for amazing meals, a warm bath of socializing and blurred edges and comfort after my mother died and post 9/11. For my apartment and getting to be creative there, start a blog, hone my voice. Grateful for learning what to avoid creatively, like signing on to other people’s projects b/c I didn’t trust my own.

For my young adult years, going to college, loving, my first real true love relationship, the authenticity and integrity of feeling in heartbreak, the true connection shared.

For meeting and forging a real life with Brent, the ups and challenges we shared there. The beautiful cats we loved and had to help usher into the next life. 

For forging true friendships that continue to blossom. ​

For my enriching yoga practice that blossomed there thanks to finding Jenn F's classes. 

Grateful for the gorgeous retreats and finding my heart center again and learning to TRUST it.

For the challenges, being scared, scaring myself, learning what I want and DON’T want, who I want to be and DON’T want to be and who I want to be with and don’t want to be with.

For learning it would never quite be “my place,” and that I could never quite get it to care about me and what I do the way I would like to be cared about. And, as such, allowing me the relative anonymity to get as creative as I wanted. Yes, I felt stuck a lot, too, but that also taught me how I don't want to feel.

For the fun times — like running karaoke, drunken nights, beach times, dinner with peeps, playing SUC shows (especially the daytime ones) and feeling connected to the community. 

For the east coast upbringing and its responsibility for my sharp wit and also the lessons about softness. 

For the grace running through all of it, how life gently showed me the way, met me where I was, urged me along.

For the lessons of last year [I basically yadda-yadda-yadda’d the cancer — but that’s what I’m talking about here]. And for seeing that the culture of entitlement and ambition is an illusion — real for those people, sure, but not aligned with my truth.

For the walks by the Charles River, dips in the sea at Crane, full moon skinny-dipping at Walden, Gardner Museum, The MFA, Fenway, BU, oysters.

Getting to just “be” for a while. As long as it took.

Thanks to my homegal/love/writerly buddy Casey Erin Wood and her Ruby Slipper School of Magic for this prompt and mentioning gratitude for the endings. It really helped me to seal the old chapter with some gorgeous melted wax and a heart signet.

What are you putting the seal on? I highly recommend taking a mindful moment to appreciate where you have been and how much there is to be grateful for within that and where you are now because of it.