Gratitude

Recently, I was invited to write a piece for one of my favorite blogging sites, BLUNTMoms.

The editors asked me to write about the best advice I’d ever received and about gratitude.

Pfft.  Sounds like a cake assignment, right?

Yep.  Easy peasy.

Until I sat down to write it and stared at a blank computer screen.  For a looooong time.

Turns out, it was harder than I thought.

When I looked around at my life, hoping for an inspiration, I really started to think.

Was I most grateful for the words of wisdom my father imparted on me as I grew up?  Phrases like “It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission” and “Just act like you know what you are doing and people will follow” came to mind.  Little pieces of him that ring in my mind daily and remind me how much I miss him two years after his death.  Words I still live by and often, get me in trouble.  Ahem.

Or, maybe I was most grateful for the 90 year old patient told me that the secret to her 60 year marriage was separate bedrooms? Advice whispered to me in a crowded hospital hallway after she saw my new engagement ring on my hand.  But, since I didn’t take that piece of advice and after 15 years of cohabitation in the same bed pretty much convinced me she might have been a bit confused, I decided that wasn’t the best piece.

Then, I thought about the beautiful notes my mother in law gave to both Hubby and I on the night before our wedding.  Handwritten and personal to both of us, she detailed on beautiful card stock what she felt made her marriage to Hubby’s dad successful.   But the notes were tucked away in boxes way up in the attic and frankly, it’s scary up there and I wasn’t going to navigate the rickety stairs to search for the letters, good advice or not.  No disrespect, Mom…

Finally, after much introspection, I came to the realization that my friends, particularly the friends I made just after having the Fruit Loops, were the ones who had given me the best advice of my life.  Practical and real, honest and brutal, these women gave me the tools to survive the harrowing experience of becoming a mom for the first time.  Without friends to tell me that it was okay to hate my kids sometimes and that it was completely normal for my boobs to leak like a crack in the Hoover Dam, I’d never have survived those first few years of parenting.

My friends saved me and helped me find myself as a mother.  And I was forever grateful.

And I’m grateful, too, that BLUNTMoms gave me the opportunity to say thank you.

Please click to read my post, “Being A Mom Is Hard, But Good Friends Help” and make sure to give it a thumbs up if you like what I have to say.

What’s the best advice YOU’VE been given?