I came to Gratitude because I was tired of feeling like life was something I had to survive rather than inhabit.
When my therapist first suggested I write down one gratitude a day, I struggled more than I expected. I thought gratitude had to be something big, a breakthrough, a win, a dramatic shift. On hard days, that felt impossible. If nothing monumental had happened, I assumed I had failed the exercise entirely.
Some days I sat staring at a blank page, frustrated and discouraged, convinced I was doing it wrong.
Along the way, I found the Gratitude App, and with it, a gentler way in. I began building a small morning habit. Each day, before the world rushed in, I would review past entries and write three gratitudes from the day before. I didn’t force them to be meaningful. I just let them be true.
Slowly, my understanding of gratitude changed.
I realised it wasn’t about the emotional weight of what I was grateful for. It didn’t have to be profound or life-altering. Some days it was as simple as a sunrise catching me off guard, or the quiet presence of a sandhill crane standing nearby during a walk, close enough to notice, calm enough to stay. Moments I once would have walked past without really seeing.
That shift changed how I experienced my life.
Knowing I would return to those moments the next morning made me notice them as they happened. Gratitude stopped being something I searched for after the fact and became something I lived inside of. It softened my tendency to rush, to overlook, and to focus only on what was missing.
This practice didn’t erase the hard parts of my life, but it gave them context. It helped me fully appreciate the life I already have, the small moments, the quiet beauty, the steady things that were always there waiting for my attention.
Now, gratitude is how I begin my days and how I ground myself in them. It reminds me that my life isn’t defined only by challenges or change, but by presence. By noticing. By being here.
Gratitude didn’t fix my life, but it taught me how to see it, and myself, with more care.
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