athene

Thank you message board people for creating this!

Here are 10 for today- I am grateful for...

1. A close work friend gave me a ride home last night & it massively started to rain just after she dropped me off. I felt grateful for the moment in her car, laughing & chatting, and knowing life changes- we're both unhappy at work, but for now we still work together and I'm super thankful for her friendship.

2. There is a full carton of fresh eggs in the fridge. I can bake, and am psyched!

3. The apartment is pretty tidy & not a Hoarders bombshow like in the past. I still need to face areas of unmanageability, let go, and keep it fresh around here. But I am grateful for the progress.

4. Okay another food one. Apples, avocados, kale, & fixings for smoothies also in stock. Need to eat them! Grateful for the abundance of nutrition, but self-care still a challenge bec. I'll easily eat cookies for dinner.

5. Have a job, apartment, car- it can freak me out with worry at any given time, but for right now, it's all okay. I am grateful for the stability that does not come easily to me, and I am absolutely SO grateful that recovery is helping build this day by day.

6. Deeply thankful to be in relationship with God so much lately & other lessons in Spirit and wisdom from a diversity of sources. Have been plugging into a few churches lately & watching their services online, and last weekend I went to one in person.. Alone! This was huge & turned out to be awesome.

7. Grateful not to be hungover with a burnt out throat from smoking weed non-stop, and so completely out of it. I am thankful for this beautiful sober brain not getting pummeled.

8. Feeling love & appreciation for people. Praying over those where love comes harder & am grateful for this lesson. Lots of sick people. Forgiveness is a gift.

9. My writing is coming together more & more, even though this is scary. I'm grateful for poetry lately, where a lot of raw, brutal feelings are being channeled into this format. Poetry speaks really well to the subconscious, complicated riddles of pain & the making sense of it. I go into a poem & have no idea where it will go, then look at it and say "ah that's what is going on" & I edit it into shape or leave it like a punch in the wall.

10. SO grateful to have found this community, as I'm in flux with the world of fellowship in person. My hermetic isolation loner phases aren't healthy & this is a nice bridge as I steady on.

Thanks for this & the NA post on using gratitude to get out of the pity party!

Opivotal

Welcome athene! Love your top ten!

athene

Got into a real bummer mood & prayed, then watched church online w/ a sermon on Grace, how each day is new, and we need to carry forth our best selves bec. so many people need it. Gratitude came to mind, so I sketched out another Top 10.

Top 10- today I am grateful for...

1. A good, healthy breakfast- veggies, egg whites, whole grain toast, green tea.

2. The birds are chirping outside today, the first time in a long while w/ this long & hard winter

3. Going to see a movie later w/ a friend & my bus pass is loaded up and ready to get across town

4. Have some bucks in the bank & in the wallet- not millions, not even hundreds, but hey! I'm not scrounging for change

5. No drama today? Nope. Had to think about that. Was going to shoot off an opinionated & grumpy email, but deleted it & figured, "Live & Let Live".

6. Not hungover or high!

7. Have the use of this computer

8. Drinking a clean glass of water, which a lot of people in the world don't have. Very thankful for this

9. There is still some of the loose leaf green tea leftover from Christmas & a gift from my youngest brother who is stationed overseas, was terribly sad not to be home for the holidays, and yet managed to get everyone cool, meaningful and thoughtful gifts. I'm thankful to be reminded of his selfless, caring energy bec. he can be hard to reach emotionally sometimes.

10. There is a ripe bunch of bananas that haven't gone gross yet & a defrosting chicken in the fridge for some soup to make later. I have gotten by on rice & beans for a week before, or even peanut butter & jelly non-stop recently, so it's still an area where I'm not always super functioning (& when I get frustrated- I want substances) so I am thankful for this incredibly simple thing. But I need to make the chicken & eat the bananas- so, it's not over yet!

Keepin on- gratitude a great way to get out of the pity party. Thank you for reading.

athene

Oh boy- right on time. Keep forgetting about gratitude- what an amazing concept! I am feeling all kinds of discouraged, and when that happens my head goes back to using, like "recovery sucks- what's the point?" and all kinds of negative thinking. Gratitude is such a great way to get a mind shift. Okay- so today's top 10, I am feeling grateful for...

1) This great cranberry & lime fizzy water my boss bought for me. It is cold, tastes good, and he is a nice guy to spring for it.

2) I had a free lunch today bec. we met with some caterers pitching business & there was enough to have leftovers for dinner tonight too (or lunch tomorrow).

3) Going to Chicago this weekend, which gives me anxiety to see family, but glad to get out of town anyway & grateful to have the vacay time and money for a plane ticket. Really looking forward to seeing my niece & nephew.

4) Had some clean clothes this morning & could fit into them- barely, need to increase the activity for Spring coming up!

5) Had a good life coaching sesh last night & am feeling glad to be doing this work. He helped me to think creatively about approaching self-sabotage and areas where it was showing up. I've been thinking about it all day.

6) I was listening to Tupac, and am grateful to have fallen in love with my friend who got me into him & that love could teach me so much, even if it ended up as a friendship, I am fine with that.

7) Ummmmmmmmm. I am grateful to be alive. I was suicidal & at some very low points in my life, put in harms way many times, and I am still here & feel grateful to keep finding out more about life. I thank God every day for letting me still be here.

8) I feel grateful to live alone, even though I'd rather be married again, in the meantime I am thankful to have things my own way & to have the peace of a quite place. I'm glad not to live in chaos.

9) This has gotten so personal! Okay. Thinking. I am grateful for the program, which I am kind of stuggling with right now & this issue w/ the meetings is a temporary setback, but overall I want to change my life & know the work is important. I am thankful for this space until I can find a new home group.

10) I am thankful that my cute hat matches my cute coat, and it looks olden times vintage style & not manly like I have felt in the past bec. I haven't taken the time to try and look fashionable. My looks really fell to the wayside in the deepest parts of depression, esp. during Step Four when I hit the wall on grief in a big way, but I came out of it & have a much lighter load now, so it is awesome to look cute again in my own way! This feels like progress.

Okay! Thanks!

Opivotal

Your gratitude inspires me athene! Thanks for posting.

athene

Thanks Opivotal I was around some work friends today, who I know are still big stoners & we used to smoke together, and it was striking how one in particular doesn't come from a place of gratitude. She's not a bad person & I'm not judging, but the resentment and hostility really build if you can't stop to see what blessings there are, even in small things like the heater is on for winter. Just glad to be out of that place where a packed pipe looks like the answer.

athene

Work really brings out the resentment, so taking another pause to live in abundance, feel held by God, and to feel the gratitude. Today I am grateful for:

1. A small tube of L'Occitane hand creme that is "Jasmine Passion" scented & is bringing me great joy in the nostrils and hand softening space. My sister gave me this at XMas & said she almost kept it- ha! Glad she didn't.

2. A good cup of coffee- just finished it & yummy! Tasty!

3. I have my teeth- one crown, but otherwise all there. This guy I know lost some of his teeth & is getting gold replacements, bec. he's the type of guy who could pull off that look, but I most certainly could not & am really motivated to floss. Seeing pictures of his missing front tooth is skeezing me out.

4. A good friend sits behind me at work & she's awesome- I am so thankful for that friendship.

5. Was just listening to some music & like Arcade Fire sometimes. They capture the drama of life, which is feeling kind of dramatic lately & crazy, hard to understand, weird. I have a v. hard time sitting in the moment & dealing w/ the anxiety of not knowing what is coming next, which is what drugs punctuated, like there was a sense of control. Or you could drink & not care, just get lost in it, but then I would get too lost. So I don't know- grateful for how music scratches that itch. Art does that. Writing. Film. All of it. I can be sober.

6. Dang- this is when it gets hard to think of stuff. Okay. Grateful that time change is coming in 2 weeks. SO READY TO BE DONE WITH WINTER. But I am grateful to be alive, so I'll take whatever is going on- try & see the good in winter too!

7. My friend was in a music video abt. Chicago (Silver Planes? I think that is the band. It was a tourism vid for Orbitz that came out awesome) & I'm grateful to have grown up in Chicago, which can be in a cool place. Glad not to live there- too many haunting memories from the early part of life, but when the glass is half full, I see the upside to it.

8. Had a small glazed chocolate Munchkin donut. What the hell- why not? Just a little one. Grateful to be in a country w/ an abundance of food & that it can be laying around for anyone at work.

9. Grateful for the AWOL group (12-Step study group/ 4 of us met weekly for a year) & what we did when working through the Steps. The group fell apart at Step 8, and I was in resentment that we didn't go to conclusion, and I felt extremely irritated w/ one guy in the group, which is why I stopped going to the Marijuana Anonymous meetings, but as time goes by- I can see that we were there for each other in some rough emotional moments. Nobody is perfect. I don't really feel like seeing them right now, but I am thankful they helped me get through the Steps for the first time.

10. I am grateful for the concept of gratitude. There is so much abundance. I have been to countries w/ extreme poverty & know how lucky I am to have multiple bottles of shampoo in my shower right now. I didn't see anyone die this week. The air was clean. The water came right into the faucet. The military wasn't patrolling the area with guns out.

It's all good! Thank you!!

athene

Thanks to anyone dropping by

It feels weird putting this gratitude out there & I want to delete all of these! But in all honesty, it's helping to keep me in a good frame of mind.

Today I am grateful for:

1) the laughter of children- esp. my niece & nephew, it is delightful

2) money in the bank- always grateful for that

3) to be alive & in recovery- it's still so scary where drugs were taking me, I can't believe it sometimes

4) to be free & not incarcerated- I watched a show on women in jail, who ended up on the wayward path in their drug use. One gave birth to twins in lock-up & the babies were only days old when she had to surrender them into her husbands care. Her sentence is for 7 years & she has 2 other children. I feel grateful to have made different choices.

5) glad that it is March! Feels like winter will be forever-grateful I don't live in Siberia where it is forever.

6) grateful for friends & family

7) thankful I've got a decent resume as I'm thinking about a change, even though I regret being high for so many years, I have to look on the bright side & see it could be worse

8) have a nice hot cup of ginger tea brewing

9) got to see a good friend yesterday & just love him- he's sober but not working any program, so I shared some lessons, but gently

10) glad I'm in a better place- making progress everyday. So thankful for that & for spirituality as my rock and guidance to hang steady.

Thank you!