As part of healing from a traumatic post-surgical experience in 2010, I decided to consciously focus on what I was grateful for. Try it. Start a list and keep going until you are all out of ideas. Shifts the energy big time. Let me know how it goes.

Here is the poem from Thrown Again into the Frazzle Machine: Poems of Grace, Hope, and Healing.

2/24/10

Beginning a Very Long List

I am grateful for fading of images
burned on the pliant leather of my mind.

I am grateful for forgetfulness and forgiveness—
for me included.

Some things I don’t want to remember
and write about, teach and ponder.
I am the ever-changing center of it all.

I am grateful for the people who came to help me heal:
those in my circle, those who did one small essential thing.

I am grateful for insides that stay in
and strong muscles, intact skin.

I am grateful to be pain-free, to wear regular clothes,
to eat and digest food, to laugh and blow bubbles.

I am grateful for sleep, for reading, to be able to write.
For clear mind, to climb stairs,

to be able to get out of bed by myself.
I am grateful to drive, to go off alone…and safe.

I am grateful for massage and colored light,
acupuncture, guided imagery, talking, and healing energy.

I am grateful for breaths that soak deep into my body,
for heart pumping in steady rhythm, blood flowing freely in vessels.

I am grateful for clean clothes and fresh sheets,
a cozy comfortable nest of a bed,

warm showers and coconut bubbles sluicing over clean skin.
I am grateful for generous husband, kind children, concerned family.

I am grateful for a future stretching out with possibility.
I am grateful for taste and smell, hearing, touch and sight.

I am grateful for returning clarity and balance, peace and harmony.
I am grateful for timely Olympics, Elizabeth Peters, and Enya.

I am grateful for my fun little blue Mini Cooper in need of cleaning.
For snowy days soon ending in spring, for passing seasons,

crisp air, watercolor clouds, intermittent sun.
I am grateful for warmth and water, softness and firmness,

promise of returning strength, for blue nails like an ocean in the desert,
for girls’ day out, replenishing, restoring.

I am grateful for what is coming, for juicy, rich days ahead
and for what is past, healed and done.

No, I do not need to remember all the dark abyss details
to be grateful I made it again to light.

Did I forget the Loving Others, those guiding ever-present spirits?
I didn’t mean to.

The list is long and continuing: a comfort bear brought to the hospital,
a timely shoulder rub and discussion of the history of Jell-O,

story-telling, a sweet kiss, encouraging words,
so much gratitude every cell is filled with it.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2010