Practicing Gratitude

One summer, my mom and I decided we would start  practicing gratitude together.  I was working in a different province at the time, so we would exchange our pieces of gratitude over the phone, e-mail or snail mail. It was helpful to have someone accountable to share the pieces of my day/week with that made me thankful.  I agreed to embark on this adventure with her, which meant I had to start actively  paying attention to what I was thankful for.

One piece of gratitude I'll never forget occurred when I was driving to work one morning.  As I turned the corner to drive up the last hill before work, I noticed someone had peeled up the yellow dividing line and created  a huge smiley face right in the centre of the road. Upon inquiry with the usual suspects (teenage coworkers who lived a few blocks over), told me they peeled the yellow lines off the asphalt just after it was placed down by city workers the night before and made a smiley face from it*.  I'm sure if you tried hard to scowl at it, you could... but it was simply too hard not to be overcome by a smile as you ran passed it. 

I get this same feeling when I drive down Hwy 24 from Cambridge to Guelph, ON.  For years I've wanted to thank the farmer who, year after year, continues to cut into his field a huge smiley face for all to see who pass by. I don't know why he does it, but I am thankful he does... I can't imagine I am the only one. 

Of course, it's easy to practice gratitude when life is going well.  It's when life gets rough or when recovery seems exhausting that it becomes more difficult to see pockets of thankfulness. I urge you, however, to find them... because they are there. It can be as simple as being thankful for the way the sun is shinning that day... or you hear a song you like on the radio.  It doesn't have to be a big event or exude the purest form of joy you have ever felt... it just has to be something that makes life a little more tolerable than it did before it occurred. The more you do it, the easier it becomes...

So... when your right eye is watering and it's driving you nuts... be thankful that you have another eye that is working as it should (this was me two weeks ago!). When you are sitting in front of a meal that is triggering, be thankful that the plate it is on is clean. If you're in an inpatient program and you're missing school, maybe there's a sense of thankfulness that your room has a window. There's always something... it's there. Will you allow yourself to see it?

*I do not condone this act and recognize it is illegal... it still makes me smile though :)

Thankful For Our Bodies

I remember being in grade five or so, sitting on the floor of our school's gymnasium during an assembly. I sat there, looking at my feet with such distain, disgust and shame. I hated my feet. I thought they were huge.  If I hadn't known they were my own feet, I would have thought they belonged to a  Sasquatch.  I didn't care that they enabled me to walk, run and skate around. I didn't care that they supported my body, allowing me to stand and balance. I didn't care that they had this amazing quality of being able to spread its toes like nothing you've ever seen, freaking people out. All I cared about was their size. Too big, not lady-like, etc. 

Skip ahead to my fourth year of University. I found myself sitting in the library of a University reading a textbook on the human development and growth across the lifespan. To my amazement, I read how feet grow prior to an onset of growth in height as the feet support/balance the body.  The size of my feet in grade 5 were simply a natural and normal part of my development. It was healthy, not bad or wrong. My body was just doing what it was created to do. I had the same feeling when I learnt about set-point theory (your body has a genetically predetermined weight range it will hover around when you are eating and exercising normally). I'm not saying acceptance of my set point was instantaneously, but it definitely helped to know my body knew what it was doing regarding my weight. 

I wish I could tell my younger self on that gymnasium floor why my feet were the size that they were. I wish I could tell her about set-point instead of B.M.I..  I wish I could tell her to be thankful for what her body was doing and to also accept its limitations.  Perhaps, she wouldn't have had the need to desperately manipulate it into something it was never meant to be. Moving forward, in the unknown amount of years ahead of me, I want to carry a healthier and more positive perspective towards my body.... both in the things I understand and the things I don't.

I had a conversation with the illustrator of wiTHIN (Emily McGratten) earlier this week. She told me about an interview she heard on the CBC about bodies and how we have a hard time accepting what it does, how it changes over time and how we get upset or feel shame about the things it does to keep us healthy.  For example, farting is an important part of our bodies functioning that is some what uncontrollable. In our society, it can be shameful or disrespectful to be caught passing gas. 

The main point of this post is not to focus on farting or feet. The larger point I want to make is the importance of learning about our bodies, how it functions (and to know the signs of when it is not functioning correctly) and to encourage us to be thankful for what our bodies do, as opposed to how it looks, smells or changes over time.  I want to encourage other to not take their bodies for granted, yet to embrace EVERY part of it... both inwardly and outwardly.