Giving My Thanks

It's Thanksgiving today and I have some things to give my thanks for.

I am thankful for the whole year of difficult work I was assigned to do. When I was coming here I didn't know what was awaiting and that I will receive one of the most important lessons in my life in the days to come. My life has put me on a path which I will follow: the path of self-appreciation, self-respect, self-trust and other selves which I can't think of. Self matters. Self matters to each of us and each self is important. Try to ignore your self and you will cheat not only yourself but everybody around you. Try to ignore who you really are and you will die, your spirit will die, your body will die. I witnessed that. 

I am grateful that I have people around me who told me: you matter and what you feel and think matters. Your life should be lived the way you want it to be lived and only you have the power to change it if such is your wish. I have received a gift of unconditional love which I see in the eyes of my Shirley each time she looks at me. I know that I don't have to be anybody else. I know that I am enough. I am taking that all with me.

I am grateful for lessons of love and compassion when I needed them from my friends in Poland and people who just met me here and recognized the great need in me to be hugged and reassured that everything will be fine, that the pain goes away and that Life doesn't give me more than I can handle. Sometimes it felt as if I would not go through the next minute, so huge the pain was. But I did. And these are also valuable lessons of how resilient a human being is.

I am finally grateful for and daunted with the task of taking the responsibility and ownership of my life. I had a history of victimizing myself, looking for the answers to whys in wrong places when it has turned out all the answers were in me. Slowly and not without resistance I am unearthing my truth: my truth about myself and who I have become in the past years and the reality that almost everything in my life comes from me - not some external powers working outside me.  I am the beginning and the end of my own journey.

I am grateful for my Family. We have been through a lot and I understand that each and single of us has challenges. I know that each of us is trying to make the most of what we have at our disposal at the moment. I trust that there is a happy end, against all odds.

Finally I am grateful that I am.