How Gratitude Healed Me

I would like to share a personal story with you.

When I was in my 30s (and I just turned 70),
I was a single mother with two daughters growing
through their challenging teenage years,
not to mention an antagonistic ex-husband,
and many, many things in my life
had not turned out the way I thought they would.

I found myself struggling in a swirl of sadness,
disappointment, heartache, and despair.

I was a yoga teacher and had my own yoga studio.
Teaching yoga carried me through the turbulence like a life-raft
and brought me much good feeling, solace, and peace.

But still, I found myself struggling not to drown.
I tried many ways to find meaning, purpose, and love.
But there seemed to be an endless unfolding of painful
disappointments. And I just kept getting more
and more depressed.

I found myself trying not to cry
whenever anyone asked me how I was feeling
or how I was doing. I was really struggling.
It was a very dark time for me.

And I became determined to help myself
and to show up with love and light for my daughters.
I decided I was not going to give in to being depressed.
I became very attentive to what I was feeling,
so I could catch that feeling when it started to stir within me.
And I made a comprehensive list of things I would do
to make myself feel better when I felt myself getting drawn
into that dark, miserable, unbearable place.

Let’s all take a few deep breaths together.

Feel your body.

And relax.

One of the things that saved my life
was discovering the miracle of gratitude.

In that dark, desperate place that I would find myself,
I began to ask myself, “What am I grateful for in this moment?
What am I genuinely grateful for right now?”
And I would always be able to find something.
Mostly, it was something very simple or obvious.

I had hot water to take a bath.
The feelings of gratitude that came with that
awareness were so powerful,
it made me cry.

I had a bed to sleep in,
a comfortable, clean bed to sleep in.
My gratitude for this filled me with waves of emotion
that flooded my heart.

I was so grateful I could make a cup of tea!
I was so grateful that there were trees that I could hug
and flowers that I could see their beauty.
I was so grateful that I could love my children.
I was so grateful that I had a close friend
with whom I could share my heart.

I discovered that as I found just one thing I was
genuinely grateful for, my whole being shifted.
And that shifted my whole life.

I felt my being flooded
with the soothing,
loving vibrations of gratitude.
I didn’t use those words in those days.
I didn’t use the words frequency and vibration.
But now I can see that as I brought my awareness
to the feelings of gratitude, it was the energetic frequencies
of gratitude that vibrated like waves flowing through me,
flooding me with so much goodness,
in such a deep way, that it healed me.

The miracle of gratitude.

Once I found one thing I was grateful for,
I could find two, and then a third,
and once I had found three, everything had shifted
and there were hundreds of things, thousands of things
cascading through my awareness that I felt
genuinely grateful for in my life.

The miracle of gratitude.

It still heals me.
In any moment, I can ask myself,
“What am I grateful for right now?”
And as I find one thing, I instantly shift
into a higher frequency field.

Gratitude floods me with light, joy, and relief!
It shifts me into a higher perspective
and a higher consciousness reality.
I literally start to vibrate
at a higher frequency.

And I do this all the time,
both when I am feeling upset and when
I’m feeling wonderful.
It just gets better and better.

Feeling gratitude moves through me in such a powerful way,
it literally uplifts me, and I feel that I am expanding
into my infinite being.

So let me offer you that same opportunity to ask yourself,
“What are you grateful for right now?”

Find just one thing you feel genuinely grateful for
in this moment.
Breathe deeply and feel your body.
Feel what happens.

Think of another thing you’re grateful for right now.
Keep consciously breathing and
feel how the frequencies of gratitude
vibrate within you.

Now think of a third thing you’re grateful for.
And notice how that feels for you.

Breathe 3 long, slow, calming breaths.
And enjoy the journey
into a higher frequency
experience.

And no need to stop here,
we can keep bringing in the
awareness of what you feel grateful for,
and how you feel gratefulfor what you have,
all day long.

How the feeling of gratitude
meets whatever shows up
in your life.

Feeling gratitude allows me to love myself,
to love my life, and to love this blessed moment
more and more and more.

As I embrace the perspective of gratitude,
I find ten thousand things
to be grateful for.

And I’ve noticed that gratitude infuses each
of my relationships with meaning,
truth, presence, love, and light.

You can ask yourself all day long,
“What am I grateful for right now?”
Then find one thing,
and feel what happens.

We hope you enjoy your journey
into a higher frequency experience as you start to feel
the frequencies of gratitude vibrating in your body,
and uplifting your heart, as you live into being
a higher consciousness reality
for yourself.

You matter more than you might imagine.

So let’s have fun experiencing the glorious
frequency field of gratitude
together.

Truly, we all have so much to be grateful for.

Much Love And Gratitude To YOU!

What Silence Gave Me

Last night the bright moon
left its presence
on my windowsill.

I opened my hands.
Nothing fell into them.
But still, they were full.

Perhaps gratitude begins like this
not with knowing
what we have been given,
but with the trembling
recognition that we
have been given anything at all.

This breath.
This body.
This astonishment of being here
in this incarnation, this body,
here and now.

Even sorrow has left gifts
at my door.
Some wrapped in endings.
Some wore the face
of someone leaving.
Some entered like winter
and stayed so long
I forgot the scent of rain.

I did not thank them then.
But time has strange hands.
It turns wounds toward the light.
It makes windows
where there once were walls.
And sometimes what once broke us
becomes the hollow through which
the sacred enters.

So today I am grateful
for what I understand,
and more grateful still
for what I do not.

For the invisible thread that
carried me through places
I could not see beyond.
For every mystery
that refused to explain itself.

For the heart that kept beating
while I was elsewhere.
For the earth holding me
without asking my name.
For this strange life
that keeps undressing me
of everything I thought I needed.

Until perhaps one day
there will be nothing left
but wonder.

The moon.
An open hand.
And the softest whisper
from somewhere I cannot name.
You were never empty.

And suddenly,
without really knowing
who I am thanking,
I bow.

The Gratitude Shift

Make yourself very comfortable. 
Take 3 deep breaths, and relax as you exhale.
Even make a big sigh. 

Now ask yourself,
“What am I grateful for right now?” 
“What am I genuinely grateful for in this moment?” 

Think of another thing you are grateful for,
and focus on the feelings of gratitude
as you keep breathing.

And then bring to mind a third thing you are grateful for.

As you focus on the feelings of gratitude and take long,
slow, deep, comforting breaths, you bring your heart
into coherence with your brain and
your nervous system.

Your heart then broadcasts these coherent
ripples through your body, and all around you.

Notice how you feel as you keep
consciously breathing while bringing to mind
another thing you’re grateful for. 

Feel what’s happening in your body. 
Let your breathing take you deeper. 

Feel the uplifting frequencies of gratitude
moving through you, lovingly vibrating in
your energy field. 

And notice that as you focus on feeling gratitude
while consciously breathing slow, calming breaths,
great and wonderful things start to happen. 

You might be able to feel the frequencies of gratitude
vibrating in your body as you do this. 

Keep rhythmically breathing,
finding more things to feel grateful for. 

And allow. 

Allow yourself to feel everything. 

Relax and allow. 

As we open ourselves to realizing
how much we truly have to be grateful for,
sometimes other feelings show up. 
Feelings of being stuck, unworthy,
or even guilty.  

But when we allow, accept, and receive
in humbleness and gratitude, something very
deep happens. 

We can feel into the awe.
The awe of realizing how life just keeps
giving and giving. 

So allow yourself to call in more things
you feel grateful for, as you remain aware
of your breathing,
relax, allow, and
feel your body. 

Feel the place of humbleness within you
that can receive and hold all the abundance
in your beautiful life.

In a world where so much attention is continually drawn
towards division, fear, and what is broken, there is
something profoundly powerful about choosing
to place our awareness on what is good,
on what is beautiful, and on what is
possible within the human spirit. 

Gratitude can become more than a feeling ~
it can become a way of seeing, a way of strengthening
what we most want to bring forward in ourselves
and in the world.

When we consciously choose to feel gratitude
and appreciation, we experience the beauty of life
over and over again, always new, 
always fresh, always exquisite. 

Feel just how grateful you are for your life. 

Every time I have consciously and determinedly chosen
gratitude, I discovered it instantly shifts me into feeling good.
And then I can bring that goodness into not only myself,
but to everyone around me, and that influences
the whole world.

And all of this without changing anything on the outside. 

But miraculously everything does start to change
in the outside world. 

I’d like to invite you to continue to explore
and discover that no matter what is going on in your life,
gratitude can shift your current experience
and uplift you. 

You can rise above the dissonance, you can sidestep
the division, and you can embrace what is good in this world.
There is so much goodness in this world! 

Just ask yourself, “What am I grateful for right now?”

Then pause, 
bring your breathing
into a deeper coherence, 
feel your body. 

And feel yourself vibrating 
at higher and higher frequencies.

Feel the gratitude shift for yourself. 

Let’s live into being a higher consciousness reality,
so we can all live on this beautiful planet
as we were meant to, in peace, joy,
adventure, and love.

The Light Of Gratitude

I have always been entranced
by the embers of a fire.

Those tiny points of light glowing
against the darkness of a woodsy landscape.
They seem almost insignificant, and yet
they hold my attention completely.
There is something mesmerizing
about the warmth and light
they continue to carry.

Gratitude
feels something like that
to me.

As I became a full-fledged adult,
life became fuller, busier, and
more complicated.

There were things to navigate
that could alter my livelihood, my comfort,
and my sense of certainty.

And gratitude became
a beacon of light for me,
a place I could return to
when life felt uncertain.

I have learned that gratitude
doesn’t always come first.

Sometimes there is confusion,
hurt, disappointment,
and grief.

Sometimes I need to
move through all of that first
before I can find my way back.

I find gratitude now in things I once overlooked –
an open stretch of time, a day without an agenda,
the freedom to read, create, and wander.

I used to feel an urgency,
as if I always needed to complete things,
as if my productivity would allow me
to fully access my expression,
feeling, and experience of gratitude.

There is something
freeing about allowing a day
to unfold without needing
to fill every moment.

This is what has changed most for me.

Gratitude has become
less about having the life I imagined,
and more about recognizing
the life that is here.
Right now, in this present moment.

I still wonder why I sometimes have to move
through so much before I can feel a semblance of
gratitude for the life I’ve made for myself.

Maybe I don’t need to know.

Maybe it is enough to
notice the embers, to recognize the light when I find it.

And to feel grateful that it is still glowing.

The Elixir Of Appreciation

Appreciation is one of our superpowers.

And when we choose to use it,
we shift our entire experience of life.

Our ability to focus on and choose Appreciation
facilitates a shift into the beautiful frequencies
of higher consciousness already accessible within us.

There is great personal power in your ability to focus.
What you focus on makes a difference.

This is a very important point to embrace deeply,
and explore for yourself.

Your focus is your choice,
your freedom,
and your power.

So just ask yourself, “What do I appreciate right now?”

Without changing a thing, no matter how you’re feeling,
if you’re upset, or sad, or something intense happened recently,
there will still be something you can find to appreciate.

Not instead of what you’re currently feeling,
but as well as.

And if there’s a part of you that doesn’t want to appreciate anything,
you can appreciate that part of you also.

Take a moment to notice a few things that you
appreciate about your life right now.

If you keep looking, you will find many things.

What do you appreciate about nature and this beautiful planet?

What do you appreciate about some of your close friends and those you love?

What do you appreciate about yourself?

Take a few deep breaths in and out
and feel the energetic vibrations
of Appreciation in your body.

Notice in detail how you feel when you bring your focus
to things that you genuinely appreciate in your life.

Keep feeling.
Feeling is the gateway.

Every moment has some kind of beauty in it,
no matter what is happening.

And as you bring more focus to what you appreciate,
you access your own higher consciousness energy field.

You resonate uplifting positive vibrations within you and around you
at those beautiful frequencies, and you can shift your experience of life.

Bring curiosity to your ongoing exploration of Appreciation
and see what happens in your life,
as you keep resetting your focus on what you genuinely appreciate.

Each moment that you take to feel what you appreciate,
you are deciding and claiming what type of life you want to lead
and what type of future you want to create.

Discover how much mastery you have over your current experience.

Here is the elixir!
The Elixir Of Appreciation.
Take a few sips several times a day.

Highly recommended for long-term use.

Much love!

Coming Home

Many years ago when I was a child dreaming up my future life,
I used to imagine my perfect fairytale home,
nestled amongst the trees, on a hillside by a blue ocean,
with fruit trees and gardens and flowers and birds.
Good people around me.
Happy children.
Music everywhere.

But life took me down other paths
I couldn’t have imagined, and for many years
that dream became a distant memory
of a time when I believed
in fairytales.

Many years and four children
into the adventures and challenges of
my uncharted journey through life,
I found myself homeless for six months.
I had no home, no job, no money.
Just the canvas walls of my tent,
a car, my violin –
and my breastfeeding baby,
my toddler,
my two older children.

Princes and ratbags had come and gone.
Rental houses and jobs had come and gone.
I’d been scrambling for stability
as an unwilling urban nomad,
yearning for a place to call home,
struggling and grieving
for lost dreams and the life
I longed for.

Yet my heart was still beating music.
I was still loving.
I was exhausted but not broken.

Somehow amidst all of
the uncertainty, I realised:
if home is where the heart is,
maybe I didn’t need to find my home,
maybe I could create it
right there.
I might not have the life I’d dreamed of,
but what if I could create
my dreams with what I had?
Something quietly began growing in me,
a sense of possibility and
appreciation for what
I did have.

My cup might not be brimming over,
but it was half full, not half empty!
Perhaps gratitude wasn’t simply
a response to good things happening,
but could be a way of seeing things,
a choice in how we meet life.

With growing excitement,
I went out and bought myself some
fruit trees and big ceramic pots
to plant them in.

I didn’t have a place
to put my roots down, but life
is too short to wait to grow fruit!

I bought colourful cushions
and good food.
A friend built me a fire-bath,
and connected a hose
to an outdoor sink.

I turned that chapter of homelessness
into an adventure full of
fun and freedom, picnics outside on the grass,
laughter with my babies, and growing gratitude
for the simple joys of my life:
hot baths under the stars, healthy children,
a beautiful and peaceful place to camp,
and the good food on our tin plates.

And somehow, the more I practiced gratitude
for what I already had, the less I felt like
I was waiting for something else.
I began to see beauty
and richness everywhere. Home began to feel
less like a distant dream, and more like
a state of being: delighting in
the small magics of life, like the call of a bird,
a child’s laughter, a full belly.

Life had given me some
lemons for sure, but I was learning how
to make some really great lemonade!

Soon after that, miracles began to happen.
An empty house appeared on a hillside
in a forest by a blue ocean surrounded by
trees and flowers and good people
in a village known locally as
the village of the birds.
Someone asked if I was interested
in living there and even though
I didn’t have the means and there seemed to be
100 reasons why it was impossible,
I said yes.

Because sometimes, all you can do
is say yes to life –
and trust.

This has been my home now for several years!

I planted my fruit trees in the ground.
My children thrive.
Birds eat out of our hands.
Flowers grow and
music is everywhere.

Of course, there are still
challenges too sometimes,
life is life and
we are all human.

But every single day I wake up
and, for a moment,
wonder if I’m dreaming!
Every day I’m swept up in waves
of heartfelt gratitude for the magic
that brought me home, not just for the extraordinary magic
that brought me to my house in the forest,
but to the deeper magic that
happened along the way.

Because home, I learned,
is not simply a place we
finally arrive at.
It’s what we create along the way,
even with very little.
It’s the courage to plant a fruit tree,
even if we don’t know
where we will be next.

And sometimes, after searching for
home all our lives, we find it’s
been here all along, in our own making of it,
in gratitude for the simple joys
of this life, in the home of the heart.

Gratitude & Authenticity

Reflecting on gratitude,
I noticed that there were
many, many, many, many, many, many, many times
in my life when it seemed wise
to not be authentic,
many times when it seemed wise
to get along and not rock the boat.

It seemed like a really good and
important choice to make.
And how many times when
authenticity seemed problematic.

What’s that have to do with gratitude?

Well, to really feel gratitude,
you have to know what you’re grateful for,
know what you like, and
know what you value, and things
of that nature, and be willing
to feel yourself, willing to be vulnerable to
not just the joy of having or being,
but the pain of losing,
the grief of losing something.

So gratitude
becomes this invitation to
be open to feeling what’s here
and available to feel,
even if it’s sad or mad
or anything, turns out.

And for me, my quest
has been communion and
connection and authenticity.
And my conditioning has been:
keep it on the down low.
Keep your head down.
Don’t make eye contact.

Keep your thoughts to yourself.
Keep your hands to yourself.
Find out what is wanted and conform to that.

Over the years of inquiry
and inquiry and inquiry,
the layers of conditioning come up
and wash away, and there are moments
of deep and powerful gratitude
to just be here, how I am,
without trying to do it any different
inside or outside.

So that’s how it is.

So feeling that now with you,
right now, that seems like the greatest
treasure that I can find, to just be myself,
even if it’s fill in the blank.

Just be myself.

What a gift.
What a great starting place.
What a great baseline.

Maybe you can dance to it.

Much love.

I Choose Gratitude

I once believed gratitude depended on what life placed in my hands;
that somehow it was an exchange for the cards I was dealt.

Now, I practice gratitude
because I refuse to allow the difficult parts of my life
to have the final word on what it means to be alive.

Feeling gratitude is the moment that suffering loosens its grip on my belief
that life must become different before it is fully received.

When I choose to feel gratitude –
not think it,
not speak it,
not search for reasons to justify it –
but simply feel it, I stop living as though existence is something to earn.

Gratitude does not demand certainty.
It does not wait for success,
for healing,
for a winning lottery ticket,
for something to change in my life.
It is not a response to an external miracle;
it is the way the miracle of life feels inside me.

There are mornings when my body wakes carrying stones,
when uncertainty sits at my table,
before the sun’s rays have even crossed my window.

In these moments when I choose gratitude,
it reveals its true strength.
Not because the world has changed,
but because something within me has remembered that
I am larger than the conditions surrounding me.

Gratitude doesn’t erase my challenges,
it simply refuses to let challenges become my whole landscape.

Feeling gratitude turns me towards what remains.
The breath that keeps returning.
The body that keeps its patient work.
Birds continuing to sing their verses.
Hands that still hold and hugs that still embrace.
The boundless flow of love and joy from our 4-legged companions.

Gratitude is what remains when I stop meeting life as a problem to solve
and begin meeting it as a mystery to inhabit.

When I choose gratitude,
I am not looking away from what is broken and what hurts.
It is me refusing the lonely illusion that
brokenness and hurt is all there is.

I choose to return to gratitude, again and again,
not to escape my life and not to reach for certainty,
but to remember that in every moment,
my life is worthy of my wholehearted thanks.

Perhaps Gratitude Is

Nothing
asked the dawn
to arrive.
Still,
the pale golden light
slipped through the darkness
and found its way
through my window.

Nothing
asked the rose
to open,
yet petal by petal
she loosened herself
into the morning:
soft, fragrant, unguarded.

Nothing
asked the rain
to fall,
yet sometime in the night
it came quietly,
leaving tiny silver jewels
on the grass.

Nothing
asked my heart
to keep beating
in the darkness.

Nothing
asked my breath
to stay with me
through the long night,
yet it kept returning
soft as a tide,
entering, leaving,
entering again,
without being called.
And the earth held me
while I slept.

Nothing
Asked the moon to cross the sky
without needing anyone
to notice.

Nothing
asked a seed
To split open
in the dark soil,
and began its silent journey
towards the sun
as a tree.

How much of life
comes to us this way
quietly, faithfully,
without even asking?

Perhaps gratitude
is not something
we say.
Perhaps it is
the moment
we begin to become still
enough to see
that we are standing
in the middle
of a thousand miracles.

Perhaps gratitude
is simply
opening our hands
and noticing
how much has already
been placed
inside them.

Thank You

Thank you for the gift of consciousness
For open-mindedness
For clarity of intention
For the release of the old
And the willingness to embrace, now,
Our limitless potential

Thank you for the gift of vision
That we may see and appreciate and contribute to
The beauty of this wonderous creation

Thank you for the gift of speech
That through our words we may offer
Comfort, kindness, truth and inspiration

Thank you for the gift of Love
That we may share and receive
The sweet, authentic, tenderness of Being

Thank you for the gift of realization
That we may intimately know and fully integrate
The truth of our Divinity

Thank you for the gift of knowledge
That we may have the wisdom
To learn from our mistakes
And the possibility to intelligently and mindfully co-create

Thank you for the gift of life
For vitality and healing
That we may Be and give
The very best of ourselves
And wholeheartedly accept the entirety of our Being.

With Gratitude, Love and acceptance
So Be It
Amen