It’s early Sunday morning after a long string of days at home. Tomorrow I will be back to work and the workday routine.
I am grateful for good health. The hubby and I made it through COVID with minimal trouble. I am incredibly grateful for the work of the scientists and others who got the vaccines to us and in us.
I am grateful for a safe and loving home. Another quarantine experience and the yesterday’s family gathering for Thanksgiving makes me appreciate that I live in love and peace with my husband. My childhood was not safe and loving and even though it was a long time ago, that experience still clouds my days. It does make me appreciate what I have now.
I am grateful for good health, physically, emotionally and mentally. It’s been a lot of good work to get to this place and I’m grateful that I figured it out and that I’ve been able to overcome some difficulties.
I am grateful for my sobriety and the strength I’ve had to maintain it through another holiday event. Yes, I held my mother’s cocktail glass last night while she went to get her shoes and my sister’s glass of wine sang beautiful songs to me in the sunshine. And this morning I’m up early with no regrets, knowing that I’m doing well in defining my identity as a person who doesn’t drink.
I am grateful for the relationship I have with my grown sons. While we don’t see each other in person often due to distance and schedules, I am always comforted in hearing of their strength and happiness and kindness when we chat on the phone. Parenting was a very humbling and challenging experience for me and I’m glad to be at this end of it.
I am grateful for the relationship I have with my brother. He continues to struggle with his mental health and difficulties in his life. And while it can be exhausting to be his support person, I’m also honored to be in that role. I feel I get to love him the way he was never loved as a child. And that brings me some peaceful reckoning to the damage we both experienced as kids.
I am grateful for the relationship I have with my mother. It definitely has its ups and downs. But I appreciate that she lets me try to teach her what we’ve learned and she shows me bits of insight that help me in my healing.
I’m grateful to be on this journey of peace for myself. Recent thinking on this has reinforced how much I have to work to experience a sense of peace and that every day I have to make determined efforts to slow down and live more simply and with fewer forms of overstimulated compulsions to spend, eat, drink, and consume. My recent work with my brother confirms the difficulties of living with golden handcuffs, trapped in a heavily consuming lifestyle and the job demands one must have to keep up. And while I have the professional credentials to work at a much more demanding job and own a much more demanding home, it has been best for me to step back from that and embrace a lower standard of living and consumption in exchange for some much needed peace and autonomy. My home is modest. My paycheck is modest. My debt is gone. My main consumer experiences are now groceries, some media, and a whole lot of library books. This has been an effort for this addict who was always chasing the next version of the “happy home” until the anxiety and stress were just too much. I’m grateful to have figured this out before it was too late and to have a husband who embraces much of this same effort.
I’m grateful to live in a charming and safe community. In this past week of being home from work I’ve enjoyed many beautiful walks in the neighborhood, visiting the lakes and parks nearby and enjoying the sunshine of these early winter days. It’s easier to enjoy getting outdoors when the surroundings are nice. And safe.
I’m grateful for the public library system mentioned above. Not only can I get nearly any book I could imagine to read, either physically or online, but I also figured out how to get to online magazines for free. This is another example of getting to live a more simplified life and I am amazed that anyone spends money in books and magazines when all this can be had with a public library card.
I’m grateful for my quiet early morning time with fresh coffee and the mindset to think and share my gratitude. I’m grateful for this community and forum as we all share this journey of recovery. This group has been a key to my success in the journey and has helped me prevent relapse many times. Thank you to all of you and I wish you the best for this day and the coming week.
Peace.
You’ve got, a higher power, got me singing every second…… 
or is it nothing. Just because I can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. Whatever “it,” is.
. Grateful I stopped isolating and being fearful so that I actually use the pool here. I didn’t use that resource until I stopped using. Grateful that I open my blinds instead of keeping them closed all day. Grateful that ain’t me anymore. So effing grateful. I’m grateful for your beautiful share 
blessed be
)
sound. I can see her lips and face and remember her trying to do it distinctly.
