Category Archives: happy

An Attitude of Gratitude

Leave a reply

It’s a tough time of year for me come fall. The sun doesn’t shine as long, the leaves fall from the trees after a magnificent burst of color as they dance toward death before winter, and the skies are nowhere near as bright in the middle of October as they are at the height of July. Toss anything else in that mix and I start digging a rabbit hole to crawl into until Spring.

Gratitude JarThis year, I decided to do my very best to keep out of that rabbit hole. In addition to my SAD Lamp, I created a Gratitude Jar. I don’t remember where I first saw the idea (probably Pinterest), but it struck me as something easy I could do that would help all of us focus on the positive instead of wallowing in the depths of The Nothing that surrounds us like a parasite through the fall and winter months.

I posted a picture of my Gratitude Jar on Facebook and a friend immediately asked me how I did it. I promised her a blog post about it, complete with printables. So here we are!

Step 1: Buy a jar. Or use one you have at home. I found a really fantastic one at the local Goodwill for less than $2.00. You’ll want a smaller jar or vase to hold the strips you’ll print out for writing just what it is you’re grateful for every day.

Step 2: Create a label. I used Microsoft Word. Chose a Gift Certificate Template and adjusted it to my needs. I replaced the wording with a description of what to do as well as a couple of inspirational quotes related to gratitude. I used this list at Inc for quotes. (40 really great ones!) Based on your jar size, you may need a different label. Feel free to play around in Word and create your own. The one I made fit my jar perfectly.

Step 3: Cut out the label. Using a simple glue stick (borrowed from a school age child), glue said label onto jar. Place face down on a hard surface (I had to put it in the middle of our dining room table so the cat wouldn’t bat it off onto the ground).

Step 4: Again, using Word, I created a simple one column table the length of the page, and simple copied and pasted the words “I’m grateful for” in each row, leaving plenty of space to write a few things. Print, and cut out. I used a paper cutter but you could use scissors. The nice thing about doing it this way is that instead of buying a pad of paper, you can just print and refill as needed.

Gratitude Jar LocationStep 5: Set up the Gratitude Jar in a place that makes it easy to use. A common area but not in the way of anything. As you see, I have the Gratitude Jar on one side, and the little vase with the strips on the other side of a gorgeous vase that sits on our game cabinet in our dining room. So far, it works well. (We’re on day 4, I think.)

And that’s it. Easy peasy. While I am having to stretch to think of something for which I am grateful every day, it’s a good habit to have. Positive thinking matters.

And now, for the printables:

Gratitude Jar Labels

Gratitude Strips

Go forth and be filled with gratitude! Oh, and you’ll notice that there are TWO Gratitude Jar Labels on the printable. Make one for a friend and share the gratitude!

Guest Post: On Meeting An Angel

1 Reply

PP Blogathon BlingToday’s post in celebration of Katherine Stone is brought to you by Deborah Forhan Rimmler, a member of the board of Postpartum Progress. There’s no intro to do it justice so I’ll just let you read.

I’m always curious about where God might pop up.  You see, I’m the kind of girl who finds a connection to the Divine in random places—a quiet snuggle with my boys, when my husband loves me even when I’m being a jerk, a long bike ride, my dear aunt’s funeral.  You get the point.

Five years ago I was struck with horrible postpartum OCD, the soul stealing kind where you have visions of hurting your own baby.  Even then, I was still lucky.  I had a swanky doula, got a great psychiatrist and slowly got better.  Still, there was this huge gaping hole in my heart that only I knew was there.  I swear you could see all the way to infinity and back that hole was so big.  I was sure I would never really be happy again or be joyful as mother because this terrible experience haunted me.  I put on brave face. I cared for and played with my baby.  I prayed, tried to meditate, did yoga, and watched chick flicks. I did all my happy things.  Only it was still there.  That big gaping hole of fear and sadness over this experience.

Then I met an angel—the working class kind, which in my opinion is the very best type.  You see, she is one of us.  A human with no special wings or privity with God’s plans for the universe.  She was just a very brave mother who had dared to share her story with the world about how she, too, had these intrusive thoughts about hurting her baby boy.  And I mean the whole world—she put in on a blog!  She just put it out there in a matter-of-fact way about how postpartum depression, anxiety, OCD and psychosis are simply treatable diseases.  And she got other women to share their stories on her blog.  And she gave up her lucrative marketing career, at a significant financial cost to her family, to build this blog day after day.  For. Ten. Years.

Every story was just as beautiful and brave as the one before.  And in these stories there was a divine truth that healed my draining soul.  We women are not alone, and it is not our fault we got sick.  I even felt God’s love for me, my sick brain, and all the other suffering mothers past and present in the community of these stories.  And the gaping hole in my heart and soul got plugged with the honesty and bravery of these women sharing their truth.  And one day I started to feel happy again.  Full of hope for my life as a mother.

Thank you, Katherine Stone, for being that angel.  Day after day you shine the light of goodness and grace on the dark side of motherhood helping to piece our broken hearts back together.  And when that light sparks a sad, tired soul and starts to help it heal, you give the gift that only a true angel can give:  Hope.

Bless you my darling friend and congratulations on the Ten Year Anniversary of Postpartum Progress!

Rimmler Family 09 051Deborah is a postpartum OCD survivor and on the board of Postpartum Progress, Inc.  She is a corporate attorney and lives with her husband and two sons in Western Massachusetts.

Dear Mom,

Leave a reply

From the very beginning, you knew I would do things my own way. You encouraged that spirit in me – raised me with boundaries and manners but somehow also managed to foster a free and wild spirit without taming it.

You insisted on open communication. Talk no matter what, even when you don’t want to. I remember doing just that with you, for hours, sitting on your bed and talking about everything yet nothing at all instead of napping.

You held me as I wept when your parents passed away, soothing me and reminding me to focus on the silly and ridiculous. But always, always encouraging emotion and never shaming me for letting them out.

You gave me books. Lots of books. Lots and lots and lots of books. Required we read them before we saw movies. I buried myself in those books and loved every second of them. They opened my eyes to so many worlds, so many words, to the ups and downs, and a multitude of emotions.

You chased me around the house with a naked, dead chicken, squawking as you ran toward me while I ran away, shrieking. Or the time I sprayed you with the kitchen sprayer and got it all over the kitchen. Or the times we worked ourselves into hilarious giggles because we were simply having inane conversations. I loved the laughter you brought into my life and the devious sense of humour I culled from you. (Although I know that we take it WAY too far for you sometimes but you, dear mother, are the root of my fabulous sense of humour – that is truth!)

And now, back to seriousness….

Your faith is strong. I see the quiet peace it has brought you even when you have felt like falling apart. I know it’s what keeps you going and it’s that quiet strength given to you by God which makes you the center of the family.

It’s your mode of motherhood – the quiet strength, the hilarious insanity, and the compassion which has so greatly influenced my own mode of motherhood.

You’re still there for me when I need you. Always ready to listen and offer your opinion (even though you know I’m gonna do my own thing). You are more than my mother, you’re my here for putting up with me and the boys. I don’t know how you managed to get through raising all of us and stay as sane as you …wait… that may explain a lot! 😉

I love you more than I can ever possibly express, Mom. And today, this Mother’s Day, I am sending a great big hug down your way along with a huge thank you for your role in shaping me into the woman I am today – for being my fearless cheerleader when I thought I was completely lost – and for being there for me even when you didn’t necessarily agree with what I was doing. I am beyond grateful for everything you have done for me and can’t imagine life without you.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.

Love,

Me

Choosing Happy

1 Reply

Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product. 

~Eleanor Roosevelt~

Happiness is a direction, not a place.

~Sydney J. Harris~

Think about those quotes for a few minutes, letting their truth sink deep into your psyche. Sip your coffee, tea, juice, or water, and let it wash over you.

What do they say to you? How do they feel in your heart?

It is difficult to remember, in the depth of depression, that happiness is not a goal nor is it a place. It is instead, a by-product of life and more in the journey than in the destination. All too often, we focus on reaching a final ‘state’ and forget that our ‘states’ are instead fluid and are pulled with the ebb and flow of life.

I’ve written before about whether happiness is a choice. I did not believe happiness was a choice until I finally chose it. You see, happiness does not equal a constant cheerful demeanor. Happiness doesn’t mean everything is giggles and confetti.

Happiness, to me, is flowing with what life throws at you. It is knowing what to do when things turn negative, it is taking care of yourself in the midst of the whirlwind. Happiness is realizing that life happens and the majority of it is how you choose to react to it.

Let’s take, for example, a young woman in a grocery store. She’s in a rush to grab a few last minute items to cook dinner for her boyfriend. She runs around the store, grabbing the items, and goes to the front. All the self-checkout lanes are taken and she is left with choosing between two open registers with cashiers. One has a young mother with three children and a very full cart while the other one has an elderly woman with not much in her cart. The young woman chooses the aisle with the elderly woman. But the elderly woman is very chatty with the cashier and very slow with her wallet. She also decides she doesn’t want to purchase a few of the limited items in her cart so the young woman has to wait for a manager to come over and do a return. By this time, there’s someone in line behind her so she’s stuck and can’t go anywhere.

This young woman would have every right to be frustrated and angry. Instead, she takes a deep breath and enjoys the few moments of peace this has granted her in between her very busy job and the busy rush of cooking ahead of her. She looks around the store and notices the colours of balloons floating above displays for an upcoming holiday, she listens to the children in the aisle next to her giggle and play with each other as their mother manages getting all the groceries on the conveyer belt.

We have a choice in the way we respond to external stimuli. One of the most popular things I hear people with disabilities or mental health challenges say is that they may have x,y, or z, but x,y, or z doesn’t have them. It truly is the best way to view things because when x,y, or z doesn’t have you, it doesn’t have power over your mind which means you know how to handle it.

And as we children of the 80’s remember, knowing is half the battle.

The Gift of the Sun

2 Replies

When was the last time you looked up into the sky as if you were a young child, in awe of nature, believing everything up there was pure magic?

I do it at least twice a day. Sunrise and sunset.

Throughout the rest of the day, sometimes a cloud pattern or group of birds will catch my attention but it is the sunrise and sunset which capture my soul.

This morning, I awoke to a blushing sky, pale pink expanding across a barely lit atmosphere as the sun caressed the wisps of clouds drifting through the atmosphere just beyond the trees at the edge of the field across the road. Pale pink gave way to a golden glow, setting the naked trees afire, eventually dancing across the icy snow at their feet.

A lone black bird soared to one of the larger trees, settling in the highest branch, clinging hold as the wind waved him to and fro. Traffic echoed just below, an invasion of the solitude of the dawn cascading across the sky.

Most of the morning was filled with blue, then this afternoon, the clouds expanded, obfuscating the joy promised us by the bright blue sky in the midst of a dreary winter. But the evening sky apologized for this infraction, providing a spectacular range of colours as the sun nestled into the other side of the world.

Corals, reds, purples, blues, greys, they all mingled together just below the houses at the edge of the field, the sort of sunset which one can only witness with eyes and not capture on film.

Although I have bemoaned the existence of a sub-zero winter and being buried in far too many inches of snow, it has brought some of the most phenomenal sunrises and sunsets I have ever witnessed, including those I saw as a young child growing up near the beach.

Witnessing a sunrise and a sunset is a gift. It is sheer magic. Both a re-affirmation of life, of finding the beauty in the littlest things. It’s as if our entire day has a bookend of amazing art on either end. To ignore it, to not take the few minutes it exists and stare at it as if you are four years old again and the world is made of magic is foolish.

If I don’t take the time to do witness the beauty that is the sunrise and sunset, my day feels empty. The colours fade so quickly, the magic even faster. Sometimes I may sleep through the sunrise (who doesn’t on occasion), but on those days, I am sure to take in the state of the sky before I do anything else – even reach for my phone. The sky is the first thing I focus on when my eyes wake in the morning. It’s also the last thing I look at before I go to bed – I look for stars, for the moon, for clouds… and now that I am sleeping with the blinds opened, if I wake in the middle of the night, I get to see the moon as it drifts through the onyx sky.

Do yourself a favour this next week. Take the time to look up at the sky with the wonder of a child who hasn’t been jaded by the responsibilities of a fast-paced world. Breathe in the artistry and beauty right in front of you. Drink it in, commit it to memory, to your heart. For if you carry beauty in your heart, there won’t be room for much else.