Hawk Call and Water Way

I’m grateful for health, but I’m sometimes hesitant to share this because so many people I know are facing deep challenges; I’m thinking of my sister and the ways MS continues to erode who she is. I know she wouldn’t wish her reality on anyone, but hers is a singular journey with many lessons, and one is: appreciate the body that we have, whatever size, shape, ability –“It’s a gift that gives to us again and again.”

I’m grateful for friendship—for the all the ways my friends sustain and inspire me, teach me how to live in the world with a more open heart.

I’m grateful for my family, for the ways we knit ourselves together despite all the fractures and the ways we’ve hurt each other.

I’m grateful for students, for their resilience and humor, for the bold and tentative ways they move into their own and each other’s writing, for the ways they teach me learning starts with listening.

I’m grateful for art, for the keenly phrased line, the evocative melody, the painting that reaches inside and re-arrange my relationship to myself and the world.

I’m grateful for the planet, with its heaving sighs and temperature drops, its piercing cold and magnificent heat. I’m grateful for the opportunity of landscape and sunset, hawk call and water way.

I’m grateful for language, for the ways it allows me to grow and connect and bury and understand.

I’m grateful for my husband and daughter, for the ways we laugh and play, the ways we learn and turn toward each other.

I am grateful.

How about you? I’d love to hear.

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