So, today is the 4th
anniversary of my nightly (personal page) Thankful Posts. I've been doing these
posts for 4 years, without fail. 4 years. 4 years can be translated into:
•126,316,800 seconds
•2,105,280 minutes
•35,088 hours
•1462 days
•208 weeks and 6 days
Where did Think Thankfully come from? Let
me tell you today, in what I hope will be the start of more consistent blogging
again. I miss it. I need to get back to writing. Here's where Think Thankfully
got its start:
Between July and September 2011, I had
three relatively traumatic losses in my life when three of my friends lost
their lives in three very different ways. Rewind the timeline of my life a
little further and the start of my emotional demise came in April of 2007 when
my grandfather entered his eternal rest. At the time I was 34 years old and had
not experienced loss in this form. I had all four of my grandparents still
alive and very active in my life (and the lives of my daughters). Trying to
work through his death was very tough for me. He was a staple in my life. As
the pain slowly started to dissipate a bit….WHAM! Life handed me another
horrible loss in January 2009 with the loss of my other grandfather, a sudden
loss that no one was expecting. Fast forward to January 2010 when my beloved
grandmother suffered a horrific fall and was eventually called home in
February, just a few short days before my birthday (9 to be exact). The loss I
felt when she passed spiraled out of control. My grandmother was my rock. She
was my everything….my world. As I sit here and write this, the tears still form
in my eyes. I still feel the ache of
losing my grandmother, I miss her terribly.
As stated earlier, between July and
September 2011, I had three relatively traumatic losses in my life. In July, I
lost a lifelong childhood friend to a massive heart attack at 40 years old. We
grew up in the church together, sang in the choir, spent time in youth group,
all the stuff kids do. Learning of his death seemed to bring to the forefront
of my thoughts all the feelings of loss I felt when my three grandparents had
passed. I could hardly believe someone MY AGE had suffered a massive heart
attack. It didn’t seem real. Then came August and that meant another friend
gone. A friend I had gone through high school with (although she was a year
ahead of me), decided life was just too tough for her and she took her own life
at the young age of 39. While this loss caught me off guard, I still have
trouble understanding the taking of one’s own life. I just cannot imagine
feeling that low, but by September, I, myself, felt as if I was teetering on
the verge of a horrible depression.
And then, September rolled around and life
finally dealt me the final blow in my sorrow, sadness, heartbreak. One of my
dear friends passed away, quite unexpectedly at the age of 41, after having
surgery to correct some back issues. It was the death of my friend Rick that
seemed to send my feelings on a roller coaster ride into oblivion. I walked
around in somewhat of a daze for awhile, every time my mind had a bit of rest,
thoughts went right to Rick. I had a hard time understanding why this had to happen,
much like when my grandmother passed away. I had such built up anger that such
a wonderful person was taken from me, anger I had suppressed for quite some
time (almost 2 years to be exact), anger that resurfaced with the passing of
Rick.
It was October 4, 2011. The day before my
last living grandmother’s 83rd birthday, when I realized I had so much to be
thankful for. Rather than living life with anger and bitterness building up, I
had to focus on all I had to be thankful for. My job had been stressful at the
time (it still is, if I am to be honest here) and I could feel myself becoming
someone I did not want to be. I wasn’t sleeping at night and was basically
going through the motions of daily life. Nothing was fun anymore.
That is what led me to my thankful
journal. I decided to use Facebook as an outlet for my gratitude. My friends
became my sounding board as I posted my THINK THANKFULLY posts! Each night before I decided to shut down the
Facebook page for the night, I reflected on the things of that day that I was
most thankful for, sometimes with an explanation and sometimes without. I began
to sleep better, smile more, enjoy life, and my life took a turn for the
better. I promised myself to post things each day for a year that I was most
thankful for. This idea has been going strong for 4 years. I never stopped.
I've posted many things I've been thankful for in 4 years time and it has truly
been all of these things and much much more that I am thankful for in my life
and have brought me to the place I am today; A happy, grateful place living
with a happy, grateful heart.
Until tomorrow, my
friends......
grt
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