All posts by Katharine

Gratitude

1. Goddess
2. The path traversing the city of discovery.
3. Public art.
4. Seeing Charlene, Abby, and Eloise .
5. The kind waitress at the cafe
6. Sober since April 2015
7. Nicotine free for a couple weeks now.
8. Walking walking walking.
9. I even stopped biting my fingernails, never thought I would do that. Used to hold a cigarette in one hand and chew the nails of the other.
10. Cecilia reaching out to me to meet for coffee.
11. The caregivers who visit my father and free up time for my mother.
12. Going to see them today.
“There is nothing to fear within you. You are whole. You are lovable. You are loving. You are love. Your joy is real and glorious. Our world hungers for you and your full expression. Trust what is within you and bring it forth into the world. You and your expression are an integral part of the whole. Catalyze your desire.“ Julie Daley

Gratitude

1. Goddess
2. Comfy chairs inside at the cool local library.
3. The arboretum for walking around and learning the names of trees.
4. The sense of connection
5. Improvising a meal
6. Trying on clothes and jewelry. So many women passed things along to me, overwhelmed by this generosity. I have a few favorites on repeat.
8. Sometimes thinking about the consequences and feeling sadness.
9. City gardens.
10. A tree of heaven and a chain link fence.
“A woman, big with child, sat patiently at the curb in a stiff wooden chair. She sat in the hot sunshine watching the life on the street and guarding within herself, her own mystery of life.” Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

Gratitude

1. Goddess
2. Hallelujah, I’m a girl!
3. Took me up until now not only to know but to speak and then to act – to own it.
4. New life
5. New friends
6. New areas of support
7. Remembering who helped me get here
8. Luckier
9. New streets and green spaces
10. Even now it’s still hard to believe

Gratitude

1. Goddess
2. My father’s surgery went well yesterday, grateful for all the doctors and nurses that took care of him. He was groggy, and somewhat disoriented, and thankfully stayed in the hospital overnight. We hope to have him home today. It will be a few days at least before we know if the surgery accomplished for him what was intended.
2. Waiting with my mother at the hospital during my father’s surgery. We would read and talk. She told me stories from her childhood, and described her mother’s conversation as frequently consisting of “quotes punctuated by ellipses.”
3. She talked about her occasional indulgences. “Life is not what you wish it to be. How about some raspberries?”
4. There was some moment when I thought with the two of us sitting together with our heavy tomes laughing, how ridiculous we may have looked to some people, but we were who we were in that moment.
5. Extended bird song
6. Doubt in the waking hours, helped by writing it down.
“We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, ‘Oh, nothing.’ Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts – not to hurt others.”
George Eliot, Middlemarch

Gratitude

1. Goddess
2. A care package from Crystal 💕 Tea, a librarian mug, and a journal with the words Best. Librarian. Ever.Thank you!!💕
3. Friends who texted to ask me how I was doing
4. Hannah singing a solo “To Keep My Love Alice”. I wasn’t there but Chris recorded and sent the video. We talked on the phone before and she was understandably nervous and I said you got this.
5. Finally hiring a new librarian after a long search.
6. This

Gratitude

1. Goddess
2. Four robins in a field (maybe five)
3. Turkey sitting on a chimney on top of a house, making a racket
4. The wooden bluebird sculpture in the park
5. The view of the city towers and the sunset
6. Folia
“Full many a flow’r is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.”
Thomas Gray, “Elegy in a Country Churchyard”

Gratitude

1. Goddess
2. It says “website not secure!” Neither am I.
3. Sky is blue again
4. Dvorak
5. A phone call from my brother
6. Reading
7. The courteous and helpful man at the shoe store
8. The beekeeper set up his hives in the park
9. Listening
10. When Cassie sets up the coffee maker in the morning, all I have to do is push a button and wait. She appreciated when I bring coffee upstairs to her.

Gratitude

1. Goddess
2. I see you
3. Dorrie texts me daily with words of encouragement. Stories tell a different kind of truth than “a demand or instruction” she said. She will have hip surgery soon and it hurts her to walk. I’m grateful for friends surrounding her.
“so much subtler is a human mind than the outside tissues which make a sort of blazonry or clock-face for it” – George Eliot, Middlemarch