23/11/2022
🙏 Let's talk about Gratitude 🙏
🌷Do you struggle to practice gratitude? 🌻Unsure on where to even start?
🌹What has been your experience with gratitude?
📚Here's a little story about my experience with gratitude. Feel free to share your experience in the comments below ⬇️
When I came into recovery over 8 years ago it wasn't easy, after many relapses, a few periods of the old 'poor me' self talk, I was loosing everyone I loved, with no where to live, defeated, i was at my lowest. I was finally able ready to hear what others were saying to me.
'If you always do,
what you've always done,
you'll always get,
what you've always gotten'
Even though I had heard this more than once over the years, finally it started to have some meaning.
So the more I listened, the more I learned which gave me enough hope to start small. I set my self 3 goals,
1- to celebrate even the smallest of things by patting myself on the back (not seeking external validation)
2- daily gratitude and reflection, I started each day with a mental gratitude list and finished each day with 3 simple questions.
*what did I do well today?
*what can I improve on tomorrow?
*what am I grateful for?
I physically wrote it on a giant whiteboard I had on the wall and took photos everyday.
3- I lived & breathed the famous line 'just for today' each morning I would tell myself just get to the end of the day and put your head in your pillow clean/ sober. If that meant, just for the hour, or just for 10 mins then that's what I did.
Slowly over time this simple daily task was the the starting point to building myself a solid foundation in recovery.
Not only has my journey taught me so much about myself. But it's also helped taught me to be a better parent, sister, daughter, Aunty, friend.
Giving me the gifte of recovery.
🌼 TODAY I AM GRATEFUL 🌼
-to share parts of my story with others
-that I get to watch my daughter growing up being present in her life not watching from the side behind a substance effected haze.
-to have stability 🥰 (been in 1 place dor 3 years, longest I have been since I was 16)
-to experience the grief of loosing my Dad last month without numbing the emotions away.
