Autumnal Gratitude in All Shapes and Sizes

[Crenna]

"Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues but the parent of all others." - Cicero

Is it cliche to have a thankfulness thread in November? Yes. Do I love cliches? Also yes.

I believe all of us have something to be grateful for and I wanted a space where we could reflect on that. Every week, I will post a prompt inviting you to ponder on what you are thankful for. Can be a few words. Can be a story. Can even be a piece of art that goes with the prompt. Just a way for all of us to share a little bit of gratitude with each other as the year draws to a close.

First Prompt: Describe a relationship (friend, family, pet) that changed you, shaped you or just helped get through life. Please do not dox yourself and be mindful of names and such.

“The connections we make in the course of a life--maybe that's what heaven is.” - Fred Rogers

 

[Crenna]

This is the story about a how a dog literally changed my life:

During the height of Covid, my living situation had started to get a bit strained. As you can imagine, people stuck in the same house together for months without social activity led to some disagreements. I was also starting to feel restless in the city that I lived in. I had enjoyed living there but now it was starting to feel a bit stifling. At this time, I was living in one state and my mom was living in another.

One day, I was scrolling facebook (yes I used it a bit more back in the day) and come across someone putting a puppy for adoption due to their schedules. He looked a lot like one of our late family dogs so I sent it to my mom where the dog was located. When I woke up the next morning, I had a text from her saying that she had adopted the dog out of the blue. We both were surprised because my mom did not want another dog and definitely not a puppy. But she had told me that she just felt like she needed to adopt him.

A few months later, I went home to meet the dog and help my mom out with some moving items. Unfortunately, the puppy had been mistreated and was not really good around strangers. I was told that he would probably bark at me and just be calm. Well, I headed to him and immediately, his tail started wagging and he started licking me. By the 48 hour mark, I knew that I could not leave him. My mom was in the middle of a move and was actually grateful that I wanted to take him. He was a handful but she also did not want to rehome him again. So, I ended up taking him as my first ever dog that was truly mine.

Fast forward to the present: I have moved across country, have settled into a better job, and have worked very hard on my mental health journey. The dog I had adopted forced me to get healthy and care about another living being. And now, I can't image my life without him. We may have saved his life but he definitely saved mine.

 

[FractalHead]

Story about found-family but irl

Spoiler: family.jpg

Even with both parents and a sibling technically "in my life" as a kid, I never had any parental figures and still don't really know my sibling on any meaningful level despite growing up with them in the same house. I wasn't allowed to make friends outside of school and being an ethnically ambiguous kid in k-12 post-9/11 in the South didn't make having friends inside school any easier. College was better but it was also the first time I had a chance to learn any real kind of social interaction so, with a few exceptions, most people I knew from college and from my college city were closer to in-person versions of online parasocial relationships than real reciprocal friendships. It was better than nothing but between graduating a semester late where everyone I knew left in May and the fact that I couldn't stay in my college city after graduating, the day I turned in my last assignment felt like a horror movie and made me feel like I had a thousand-yard stare thinking about whatever comes next.

I had moved over a dozen times over the five years after graduating undergrad (this is after going back and forth between college and "home" every semester before graduating). I kept trying to be better at meeting and keeping the right people in my life wherever I ended up going. Eventually through switching jobs, a layoff, and unemployment, I tricked myself into thinking a master's degree would be helpful to get a job (narrator: it wasn't).

The master's degree may have been pretty much useless for finding a job in my degree's field, but moving to my grad school city ended up being the best thing that could have ever happened to me. I still kept trying to make more friends and find community but this time it finally worked out for me. After grad school I moved one more time and have lived in my current rental for 2 years - the longest I've stayed in one place continuously since I was 18. The people I've met since I finished grad school have been the most supportive, wholesome friends I've known so far and even with inevitable unemployment likely to happen within the next month or less, there's absolutely nothing that could make me leave where I live now because I finally understand what having a family is supposed to feel like.

I'm so grateful for my friends, and only my pets who need me to survive could be more important to me than them, but reflecting on this has made me realize I'm also grateful to myself for my ability to keep trying and learning to be a better person through past failures and everything my friends at different stages of my life have taught me.

 

[sleepybear]

Okay...I have tried to write this like...four times now and my PC keeps crashing. Well, after hundreds of words that are meant for my professional and not a forum...(that's half a joke) I'm going to ELY5 and Oversimplify, the horses taught me a lot over the years and I am incredibly grateful.

It wasn't just one, and in my writings I name three: Missy, Arianna, and Belle, who taught me life-long lessons that essentially shaped the way my belief system works. For example: Ari, aka Arianna, she taught me that I could be "heard" when I'm quiet. I say that because when I would work with her, she, only after a few minutes, learned to stop on the queue of my exhale. Exhale. Just a breath. At that point of my life I was not heard even at a scream. So...to a breath?? It was a great offset to the realities I was experiencing with the people, the humans in my life.

I am so grateful for that lesson because many people have heard me, without overexplaining or at times stating the obvious, over the years since.

 

[Crenna]

I'm late on week two...my bad y'all

This weeks prompt: Describe a location that brings you comfort/you enjoy hanging out in. This can be a spot in your house, a place outside, or even a childhood location

"One place understood helps us understand all places better" - Eudora Welty

 

[Crenna]

To be honest, this prompt was a bit hard for me to reflect on. I do not attached much emotion to the locations I find myself even though subconsciously I am impacted by them. However, I think the place that changed me the most was living in California for a few years right after college. Prior to this, I had basically lived in a 2 hour radius of my hometown my entire life. I had visited place on vacation but my world had been pretty small. When I got a chance to move to the Bay Area, I took it.

I moved there without knowing where I was going to live nor had really any friends or family in the area. It was just me, two suitcases and a dream. And so, I started to build my life there and was able to experience things that I never had before. It helped grow me as a person and I can confidently say that I would not be who I am today if I hadn't made the leap to move. Do I want to go back? Not really. It holds a special memory in my heart but I am happy where I am now. Living there helped me realize that life is a series of chapters. Sometimes, they are super long. Sometimes, they are super short. But each one shapes us on this journey of life.

 

[Jumbled]

I'm going to sort of answer both questions in a way. Since I'm late.

Reflecting on my past is hard. I can find far more bad than good and I tend to stay in the moment I'm in to keep from drifting into issues with CPTSD.

So what I will say is this. I don't think I would be here, alive today, if it were not for my grandmother. I don't know if it was just luck that I was due in April, but came out May 12th​ on her birthday that made the bond all that more solid, or if that even mattered at all. I didn't get to live with her, only visit, so the places I like to go are my "childhood house" where it was like a refuge. She moved when I was a teen, and I'd be more distraught had my Uncle not purchased the house from her. One day, that place will be mine, and I'll get to go back again to the place where the memories didn't hurt.

There's one more place, but it's more in my mind, a memory trapped in a box. Her sewing materials tucked away, trapping the lovely smell of her and her home and what it was like.

They're sad but nice memories, and I'm thankful that she cared about me. It meant everything.