Whenever evil befalls us, we ought to ask ourselves, after the first suffering, how we can turn it into good.

Whenever evil befalls us, we ought to ask ourselves, after the first suffering, how we can turn it into good. So shall we take occasion, from one bitter root, to raise perhaps many flowers.
Leigh Hunt

Happy New Year! I hope 2007 brings you closer to your dreams and more happiness than your heart can hold.
I haven’t posted in awhile because it’s an awkward time for me; so foreign in fact, that to indulge my usual banter about parties and training seems flippant and out of context. So instead I’ve been reading other people’s thought-provoking, alternate reality, online diaries and I find myself wondering, “What prompts someone to write down stories of their lives, including some of the most intimate details – fears, anxieties, doubts, blessings, truths and passions? Do they do it for themselves? Indulging the narcissistic tendencies we all have? Or do they do it to share their experiences in the hopes that their words will touch someone, and make someone or themselves less lonely, possibly fostering a connection in a world that finds people increasingly isolated, hidden behind cell phones and computer screens and windshields?”
Made me think about why I have my own public online diary. Why not just find a notebook and scribble furiously as I recall events in my life that affected me on a particular day? First of all, I find it easier to spill my thoughts onto a screen via a keyboard than to take pen to paper. I like the fact that I can compose whole paragraphs without much effort, read them, decide if I conveyed my thoughts correctly and have a nice clean edit option. Second, I think it gives people in my life who have busy, far-away lives of their own, a way to check up on me, without necessarily playing email tag. I’d like to think it allows them to know me better with all my clumsiness and imperfections, celebrating my successes and reminding me that the hard times are temporary. Lastly, and most importantly, I find that the more I talk about how amazing life is, how grateful I am for all of it, because of the good things I see and experience and in spite of the bad, the more amazing and rich and full my life becomes! Which is exactly why I referred to my blog as a gratitude journal. It reminds me that I am accountable for my own happiness and I’ve found that writing allows me to know myself better. It makes me happy to acknowledge my blessings without apologizing for them or comparing them to anyone else. And here’s the secret…consciously appreciating the beauty of life, and how I choose to live it, and my children and my friendships takes ALL the power out of any negativity that threatens to break me. It is not avoiding those challenges; it is carrying on, in spite of negativity, which makes me stronger in the broken places. And there is no amount of therapy that could do that for me.