We celebrated my daughter’s birthday yesterday since we’ll be on our camping trip on her actual day of birth. (And oh, what a wonderful day that was!)
I woke up yesterday morning, slowly sipped my frothy Nespresso coffee, and began my morning ritual: ‘Gratitude 3’.
Every morning (when sometimes all I want to do is be sad or complain), I list three things I am grateful for. I’ve practiced gratitude in my journals for as long as I’ve been writing, but I’ve been the most consistent with my ‘Gratitude 3′ method over the last few years.
So, later that Saturday morning, while brimming with gratitude and gourmet coffee, I headed to the bakery to pick up my daughter’s favorite (secret) birthday cake: a light, spongy white cake, double-layered with slices of fresh strawberries, non-dairy whipped cream, topped with more fresh strawberries. The cake is dubbed ‘Double Layered Strawberry Delight,’ Oh, what a delight it is!
Okay, enough about cakes. Let’s get down to the main ingredients of this story: I despise my ex-husband’s selfishness, sense of entitlement, arrogance, and lack of empathy. And I am genuinely grateful for his past, present, and future positive points.
For example, I am grateful for:
- My kids have spectacular medical/dental/vision coverage thanks to him
- His immaculate financial organization
- The precious time I had with my kids that his well-paying job afforded us
- Paying a fraction of the cost of medical trade school because I qualified for a referral program through my ex-husband’s company
- Getting down time to reboot my body, mind, and spirit; finding my center while my kids are at their dads
- Support of any measure
- His willingness to help with school pick-up/drop-off because he works remotely
- Making the effort to do entertaining things with the kids
On the way home from the bakery, I had an epiphany. I was sitting at a red light behind a man in a Toyota truck when his rainbow-colored tie-dye bumper sticker caught my eye; it read, ‘Make America Grateful Again.’
I don’t care whose side you’re on; you can’t argue with a universal statement like that.
One Love. ❤
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
Escape the Act Like a Man Box | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men | Why I Don’t Want to Talk About Race | The First Myth of the Patriarchy: The Acorn on the Pillow |
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