Thrive As You

It's that time of year again, I can feel it brewing. That time when people see the month of November right around the corner and are preparing their facebook pages for an onslaught of gratitude.  For the entire month of November, the time of year that graciously hosts the holiday of thanks, we see lists and "challenges" and daily reminders.  Every social media outlet will be barraged with thanks.  Instagram will do their photo challenge, facebook will be loaded with "Day 7 of things I'm grateful for...." ad nauseum.   Our feeds will be full of thanks. And that makes me so happy. Kind of. This has been a rough year for me,  a rough 3 years in fact.  And what I've learned, what I KNOW is that the only way I have survived it, and in fact THRIVED it, is through the practice of gratitude.  Now hold up.   Before we start talking about "gratitude practice" I want to talk about that phrase.  It's kind of "hip" right ...

For many years, people have told me I should write a book.  In fact, I have told me that I should write a book.  It's less of an "idea" and more of a "calling."  I just know it's inside of me and it needs to come out.  I'm not sure if anyone will actually read it, and that's ok.  The book is inside of me, and I need to write it, to express it. For a long time, I hesitated to to sit down because I thought "I'll never write like Elizabeth Gilbert ."  Well Duh.  There's only one Elizabeth Gilbert just as there is only one April Schmidt.  But the real problem wasn't really that I wanted to write like Liz, but I wanted to write a story similar to hers.  You know, minus the amazing travel.   The story of how I too, found myself crying on a bathroom floor for weeks and months on end...... took a journey (mostly internal), found and endured the David years, and then........ perhaps ended with a love story like hers and Felipe's....

The thing about being married is that you forget how fun breakups are.  Kind of like a long married couple can forget how much fun dating can be.  But there's a crushing flip side to the "fun."  A few months removed from a devastating breakup and a thousand conversations and therapy sessions later, I'm starting to realize what is truly eating me about all of this. The broken promise. It's not just David that has done this to me.  No, I have a friend who refers to "the list of men" in my life, and while there haven't been many, they all have a common theme. The broken promise. Yes David made the big promises  to me.  "I will always love you."  "I will always be here for you."  "I will marry you and be your partner until the end of my days."  "You have changed my life and ruined me for good.  I will never be the same." "I don't want to spend another day of my life without you."  "You h...