The Gratitude Effect: How It Can Literally Transform Your Life

I woke up in my own bed for the first time in nearly two months.

Sore as hell but smiling.

Waking because I was ready to after enough sleep. Not because someone wanted to take my vital readings or change the tubes in my arm.

The morning sunlight shone through the trees outside, creating magical waving pictures as it danced on the walls and ceiling. I saw this like for the first time.

The sounds of children playing and laughing outside. Birds singing. Dogs barking. Human voices somewhere.

Freedom.

I still half-expected footsteps, hospital rattles and the steady beep of the monitor I was attached to for so long.

Smiling.

Holding my son for the first time in months as he lay against me, unable to visit because of Covid restrictions.

Drinking in the total sensational deliciousness of his hair, the softness of his touch, the new freckles on his nose, the grubby fingernails which draped across my chest on his ten-year-old hand.

Every little detail, the pores on his skin, tiny blond hairs on his arm, the remnants of a home-made tattoo made from a red marker which hadn’t fully washed off yet.

I let him help me from bed and hold my hand as I walked across the floor. Thank you, beautiful open heart and little hand nestling in mine. A priceless symbol of trust and connection.

The day will come when you are too old and too cool to want to hold your Daddy’s hand or lie half-across him on the bed. So, I’ll savor this moment while it lasts.

The floorboard creaked and the door that I promised myself to fix a million times, didn’t open properly. Bliss.

A beautiful reminder.

I smiled and my heart and chest filled.

Drink in and relish these timeless and intimate moments.

Drink in and savour the present.

Not the past or the future. Don’t dwell there, they exist only in the imagination.

Imagination is for stories and dreams. And for escape.

So much gratitude, and so much to be grateful for. No need to escape anything.

…

The hospital care, professionalism and humanity by amazing dedicated staff.

The ability to get specialist tests, treatment and radical brain surgery for next to free because I live in a country with nationalized healthcare.

For this house. For my family.

For friendship. And care.

The luxury of freedom.

For the income I was given.

The choices from safety, in everything.

The luxury of my now electronically unaided heartbeat.

The second chance at life so I can taste it fully from a place of wholeness.

…

Thank you, pain for helping me listen to my body. For helping me appreciate how you have kept me alive for over 50 years without me ever asking you. I promise to look after both of us far better from now on, we both deserve it.

Thank you stress and overload, for showing me the value of self-care, of borders and of responsibility.

Thank you, manipulation, betrayal of values and trust, for showing me my values, standing in my truth and proving that I am not my job or my worth.

Thank you, worthlessness, for showing me my true worth. And for teaching me that I can rise again, gaining wisdom and strength to stand in my full, authentic power and still find joy.

Thank you, isolation and loneliness, for giving me the space to see myself. For helping me truly see, hold and appreciate my family and friends.

Thank you, suicide attempts for showing me the depth of my soul and befriending the child I kept hidden inside, unseen and alone. We aren’t alone.

Thank you, depression, for revealing my old limiting beliefs and stories, and making them available for change so that the sunlight gets in.

Thank you, forgiveness, for helping me let go of old wounds which I used to keep me safe for so long.

Thank you, adversity for fine-tuning my learning and growth. For teaching me how to live fully and for helping me see my true purpose.

Thank you guides and teachers, both loving and unloving, who helped me look at myself and life in a more wholesome, appreciative, loving way.

Thank you, life, for bringing me these lessons in a gentle way, where many others suffer far more, that I may live more fully in the face of adversity and pain as well as joy and laughter.

That I may fully know myself. And that I fully see others.

That I may fully embrace this knowing, and live from a place of peace, love, joy, gratitude, courage, wisdom and integrity.

I am alive, and my truest gratitude is to live fully in the knowingness and celebration of this miracle.

A living prayer of fullness, joy, love and peace.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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