After four years of practicing gratefulness, knowing at the time I began that it was in response to overwhelming grief, I’m beginning to understand how these two feelings dance together. 

Grief and gratitude are kindred souls, each pointing to the beauty of what is transient and given to us by grace.

Patricia Campbell Carlson

It’s been a tumultuous week. Some weeks are just like that. Equanimity was shaken, largely from inside, but I’ve gotten good practice in letting go and letting be, in beginning again. Exquisite autumn weather has enabled me to be outside a lot with the animals and the trees, which is always soul soothing. We visited the Ancient One a few times and sheltered in her embrace for some meditations.

A nice man came to plant a couple of free trees, a river birch and a Fremont cottonwood, and Wren was very helpful. Afterward she thanked him profusely. What a pleasure it’s been over the past year to see this little dog blossoming into a joyful outgoing creature, from the suspicious, frightened little rescue she was when she came here three years ago.

Despite my internal turmoil, Wren enjoyed a very good week. We had planned since spring to upgrade the patio area on the west side of the pond, and that work finally happened under her capable supervision.

The ‘trail mix’ gravel was spread, edged, and raked all in the nick of time before a good day’s rain left snow low in the mountains and frost on the pumpkin down here. Now this portion of the yarden will be safer for me and my aging friends to access, and more welcoming for mindfulness or purely social gatherings.

Wren also inspected the woodpile after a new addition. A friend was sad to have to cut down a dying aspen in her yarden, but happy to give me half of it, for which I’m very grateful. And I’m grateful that my little aspen thrives still, twenty years after hitchhiking here hidden in the soil of a potentilla shrub I transplanted from a friend’s garden.

The little blueberry bush which didn’t even bloom this year nevertheless grew under its protective netting, and then turned this stunning red. I’m grateful this week for nature’s beauty, bounty, and resilience, and for my own growing capacity to turn mistakes into lessons, to cultivate resilience, and to open my heart over and over. A phrase a friend quoted last week keeps coming back to me: “Your people are the ones who make your heart feel seen and your nervous system feel calm.” Intentionally connecting with ‘my people’, a profound acupuncture treatment, and allowing everyone to be my teacher have all helped restore balance. And this excerpt from a lesson by Sam Harris in the introductory course on his app Waking Up really shook some sense into me:

“The truth is, you know exactly what it’s like to feel overwhelming gratitude for your life. And if you have the freedom and the free attention to listen to this lesson right now, you are in an unusual situation. There are at least a billion people on Earth at this moment who would consider their prayers answered if they could trade places with you. There are at least a billion people who are suffering debilitating pain, or political oppression, or the acute stages of bereavement. To have your health, even just sort of; to have friends, even only a few; to have hobbies or interests and the freedom to pursue them; to have spent this day free from some terrifying encounter with chaos, is to be lucky. Just look around you and take a moment to feel how lucky you are. You get another day to live on this earth. Enjoy it.”

After another busy day delivering oxytocin to me and herding the sparrows, Wren finally rests. She is silently encouraging me to knit faster so she can show off her new sweater that matches her beautiful blue eye.