Tag Archives: gratitude in 100

Nov21

Yesvember: Gratitude Expressed in 100 Words or Less

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This is it!

The MOMENT you’ve been waiting for! (Well I have!)

I would like to thank these six seven brave souls for their kindnesses toward themselves; whether or not they realize it, expressing gratitude is one of the nicest things we can do for ourselves.

these people contributed their 100 words or less to show us what gratitude means to them. kismet is a beautiful phenomenon; i have a feeling some good new friends will be made amongst the contributors of this post today.

My original post solicited the following: 

Here it is:

  • 100 words or less about what gratitude means to you. Not what you’re grateful for (like an iPod or the last seat on the bus), but what it means. Writing this is meant to be introspective and candid: (show, don’t tell). It doesn’t have to be perfect, it doesn’t have to be lyrical, it just has to be original and what you want it to be. A poem, a string of nouns or verbs… up to you. Oh, and it has to be not disgusting or obscene. Any weirdness in that regard will not be tolerated. If you wish to remain anonymous, I will treat you as such.
  • 10 words which describe you (remember, you don’t have to give your name).
  • An image of you or what best features your summary.
  • Your website or blog or way for others to reach you if you are interested in providing it.

In NoYesvember, Gratitude can seem cliché, everyone is doing it, I think that’s a good thing. It’s something we can do every day.

Without further ado, we start off with words from Sadder But Wiser Girl:

Being thankful is appreciating things.  It’s an unspoken understanding and gratitude for not just tangible objects and people, but also for that which we cannot see and cannot explain.

Ten words that describe me:  Unique, scatterbrained, mother, wife, humorous, misunderstood, rambling, ADD, geek, hopeful

The Sadder But Wiser Girl
http//:sadderbutwiser.wordpress.com/

Next, I am happy to share thoughts from a high school buddy of mine, Susanne:

Gratitude is an attitude of humility and thankfulness.

  • appreciating what you have (even if you want to build on it)
  • finding positive outcomes from negative experiences
  • a feeling you get when you don’t take things for granted, when you don’t feel entitled to anything
  • a mindset of appreciation for life’s gifts even when they are concealed and difficult to discern
  • slowing down
  • small moments start to matter more like the warm glow of hugging your children
  • feeling satisfied that you reached a goal or that you had an opportunity to help someone

10 Words That Describe Me:

  1. extroverted
  2. opinionated
  3. loveable
  4. reliable
  5. direct
  6. inquisitive
  7. responsible
  8. eclectic
  9. musical
  10. gifted

You can find Susanne at Susanne’s World and www.facebook.com/susannesworld

Next, I am happy to share an amazing tribute from my friend Anh, which reminds me how this whole Thanksgiving gig got started:

I am grateful for the lady in the photo. She fled her country with her two little girls (I am the tall one). We became one in hundreds of thousands of “boat people” who fled/escaped Vietnam in those dangerous little rickety overcrowded wooden boats on our way to the promised lands. The promised land for us was the USA.

Our next grateful friend from Clearly Kristal had this to say,

Each Breath

I held my baby niece close.

Her breath warm on my cheek.

She teetered, tottered.

But it grew dark one day.

Fighting for her life in hospital sheets.

Needles poking.

Her life changed forever as a Diabetic at eight.

Now, she’s a beautiful 17 carrying an iPhone, going to dances and football games.

Grateful for each breath, she wrote a post on Facebook…


American Diabetes Month: Nearly 26 million children and adults in the United States have diabetes.

Our friend Kelly at DeBie Hive had this to say about what makes her feel gratitude:

Gratitude is so often expressed in menial terms, for insignificant things.  Gratitude is a concept that reaches far beyond the minutiae of our lives.  It is deeper.  It demands awareness, not just for what we have, but for what we don’t.  Without an appreciation for what we have lost, what has been taken from us, what has been harmed and threatened, it is impossible to truly grasp how blessed we are for what we have.

Only with that awareness can our eyes truly be opened to the wonder that surrounds us.

Embrace the void to fill the space.

————————————————————————————-

I write to stay sane.

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You can follow Kelly at http://debiehive.blogspot.com

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After looking at Kelly’s clouds and infinite wonder, I am happy to share what Sandra Gea had to say

 G.R.A.T(T).I.T.U.D.E

Every Day. Often. Especially in Adversity.

Stop.

Smile. Sing. Dance. Whisper.

Simply.

Thank. YOU.

I.

Am.

Alive.

Sandra Gea ::  Who am I ?  Wanderer. Wonderer. Heartist. Citizen of the World. Follow her blog at www.bulamamani.com

Next up to share is our friend, Lillian, from It’s A Dome Life:

Gratitude is making a choice to focus on the positive. It’s a choice to notice and be thankful for what we have. It is also a measurement. We use gratitude to determine our own level of happiness and to measure our personal level of contentment. Gratitude is also how we measure our success as we struggle against the human desire to focus on what is wrong with the world, with us, and with other people. Gratitude is how we access our spiritual being and find presence and calm in a storm. It’s a fight for love.

10 words: I am a mother, writer, painter, blogger, dancer, friend, daughter.

You can also find Lillian at her virtual art studio, Dome Life Studios.
I guess that leaves me. I was trying to come up with what I’m grateful for as this challenge is something I must also abide: 100 words or less. I couldn’t put just one finger on it so I decided that,

I am most grateful for the moments of my life that give me pause, make me take notice and justifiably humble me: sun shafts through a cloud, silence from a snowfall, children’s laughter, and beating hearts. The physical signs that all systems are still go and that I’m gonna be alright after all: laugh lines and gray roots, sweat drops from my elbows, my singing voice and writing hands, friends who stick it out through thick and thin, people I’ve never met and squirrel pants. Above all: laughter. Still, this is not enough, but it’s a start.  It will do.

10 words: feisty, loving, engaging, attentive, loyal, badger, clever, honest, true, alive

Thank you to all the fantastic writers who shared what gratitude means to them. I know other people wanted to get in on this opportunity too and couldn’t make it all roll out for their schedules. I understand that. I will badger them next year. Maybe we’ll have 12 contributors then!

Thank you. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

ps – want gratitude delivered to your inbox daily? Check out Gratefulness.org’s Word for the Day

pps- This just in from my friend Tammy Soong over at World’s Worst Moms who’s a little late to the party; she has endured had a very difficult period and I’m with her when she says she’s just glad to be here:

It’s been a rough couple of months. Truth be told, it’s been a rough couple of decades. And there are times when I feel like I’m hanging on to the good stuff by the tips of my fingernails.

Stuff like that moment right before I’m fully awake, and I’m in that fleeting window when I’m feeling “okay.” Or that little something inside that gets me up so I can interact with my kids even when I’m beat. Or that drive that’s still there to write.

And then I’m just grateful to still be able to feel grateful.

Amen to that. Happy Thanksgiving one and all.

xoxoxo

Nov13

Tuesday Morning Press #5: Voicemail, Debit Cards, Gratitude 100

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I am a little late today, with my Tuesday morning press.

I have been assaulted by a meddlesome but not outright stomach bug. I chose my bed instead of yoga today, which bothers me because I love that class.

I don’t plan to spend much time here, I prefer a total recline to my current posture. But I will still adhere: less than one hour.

Suffice it to say, however that I am glad to be here complaining about it. The past few days I’ve written a little more than I’d planned. I disclosed my personal experience with PMDD when I wrote about women’s health and re-discovered yesterday that I had a great uncle, whom I’m sure I would have known if he had not died in Normandy in 1944. So I’m already ahead, if there were such a thing in a situation where no one but me is barely keeping score.

Before I felt blech this morning, I posted on my facebook wall this:

NnnnNnnn. Why can’t all voicemail systems be alike? Why can’t 3 be delete in all systems? It’s like those stupid debit card machines asking you 60 questions before you sign out. I sound ancient. Get off my lawn.

Resist urge to write about this.

Knowing me, as I do and as I suspect you’re getting to, I am now succumbing to the urge to write about this and my feelings of get-off-my-lawn ancientism (I made that up) regarding voicemail and debit card machines. My grandparents didn’t have such woes. My parents didn’t have such woes. Hell, up until about 10 years ago I didn’t have such woes.

On my landline at home (yes, I still have one of those) “3” deletes a message and “1” plays it again. It sorta makes sense as “3” is also the corresponding number for the letter D (delete) or E (erase) or F (I won’t go there). “1” makes sense because “1” initiates everything.

Let’s not talk about (ok, let’s do) how I was trained by the almighty Verizon (who also manages my mobile account, but it would be foolish of me to suggest that the same company use the same @)!$)(%@! protocols on its other service, identical in every possible way, save for the !)(&$@(%$ codes to keep, forward, delete, repeat and deconstruct messages.

On my cell phone, I have 47 saved messages because I can’t remember how to delete them. I also have 5 that I’ve already listened to, but don’t want to press the wrong button — I don’t want 52 saved messages. So, they sit there.

I am becoming one of those people. I am becoming my brother. His voicemail cache is never able to take incoming messages.

One day I will muster the enthusiasm required to sift through all those messages and delete them to kingdom come. I know, the next time I’m in carpool. Waiting to die.

So if it’s not my phone, the other “get off my lawn” moment comes when I am shopping. I don’t carry cash, or at least more than $20 on me. I use the debit card. When I go to Safeway, I am presented with a litany of questions about the transaction from the machine; the button to “cancel” is different there than it is at Giant (or Stop and Shop) or Wegman’s. When I’m there, at the different stores, I literally feel like an IDIOT when I’ve pushed the green button. When most of us would think that green means “go” mean on one machine, on another, it means “cancel” and I have to do the whole bloody thing again.

Da. Dew nyut laff. Awl yewr munny ees is komink frum dis wun baynk in Rrrussia.

To avoid all the questions, sometimes I press “credit” but then when I think I’m done, I’m not. I have to press “cancel” because the machine will think it’s a debit experience and well, it’s not equipped or programmed to think outside its own parameters. This, my friends, is where the humans will win. We can pick up the machine and stomp on it.

Of all the hideous retail debit card experiences, my vote for most insecure machine is Target’s. You suffer through the questions and it asks you toward the end the following (my sequence might be off):

  • Total: $600,425.98
  • Please confirm / Change
  • Do you want it all on the card?
  • Yes / No
  • Any cash back?
  • $20    $40    $60    No

and then this one:

  • Are you sure?
  • Yes / No

At this point, I want to transform into the Incredible Shopping Hulk and smash the machine. Kill the machine. Kill it with fire and leave it crying.

  • No cash back. Please confirm total.

But the machine isn’t left crying, I am because I feel codependent now. I feel that if I leave this machine, I won’t be giving it a job. It’s job is to take care of me and to offer me money, even though it might not be what’s best for our relationship, and my job is to be there, to let the machine give me the money.

But there are people waiting behind me, eager for their chance with the machine. I go on my way, sadly, to my car on the tarmac.

~  ~  ~

The deadline approaches! My post “Gratitude in 100” has received a modicum of responses and I am thankful for that. If you’re waiting until the bitter end to send me your thoughts, just how you express gratitude in 100 words or less (see the link above for details), I am ready for you! I am not having huge expectations because this is a wee blog with a wee following, but I love you guys and I appreciate your checking in.

The deadline is next Tuesday! Hurry!

Thank you.