A bit of a departure for today’s piece.  It was –  I think, though I’m too lazy to double-check – one year ago today that I started keeping this journal of the little things that make me smile or forget my troubles, or just perk up my ears and take notice of the world around me each day.  I swiped the idea from a blogger whose therapist had recommended she spend more time thinking of the good things in her life, instead of the bad things that were consuming her attention.  I decided that being more mindful couldn’t hurt, might help, because honestly, I was at a low point in my life.

Coming down off my second miscarriage, recovering from an ectopic pregnancy, feeling hopeless & helpless and angry at the world, it seemed like an interesting exercise in self-control.  Can I even find five things to make me smile each day?

I figured I would shoot for a month of this.  Then, I figured it would be an interesting exercise to do until I got tired of it.  Maybe even for a whole year.

I have no intention of stopping.  Maybe not ever.

This practice has become too important to me.  It makes me feel too good.  It reminds me daily that while I have no control over some of the most important things in my life, I have every kind of control over how I process things, how I prioritize things, and how I filter my experience through my ever-clamoring monkey brain.

We become the people we pretend to be, I think, and in the year since I have started trying to pay closer attention to the things that feed my soul, I have had less room in my life for the constant litany of fear and hopelessness that has been my constant accompaniment for so long.  And while no one who knows me would accuse me of being filled with goodness & light, I’m not as bitter as I’ve been in the past, and I’m not as angry at the world.

I can try not to take everything personally, because, well, the same universe that gave me infertility also gave me my Boy.  And my wonder-whippet.  And my families.  And my friends.  And earthworms to admire.  And bamboo.  And delectable food.  And the joy of stringing words together.  And the compulsion to create.  And the movie Tremors.  And snowstorms lit up by lightning.  And the first crocus of springtime.  And the peaceful, perfect pattern of woodgrain on the floor, when the morning light picks it up.  And the exuberant glory of a lit Christmas tree.  And a pregnancy that is still, miraculously, progressing.

I am blessed, in ways both little and huge, and I never want to lose sight of that again.