Gratitude

It has been said that gratitude and grief carry the same emotional, or energetic vibration. The last couple of days, I’ve been looking at gratitude in several ways and thought I would share one of the pictures I’ve encountered in my own life.

Just last week, I reconnected to an old friend via Facebook, and it was so exciting to see him on there. Facebook is a really amazing way to connect to people – you get snippets of their life through their updates and postings. I love it. He now is married and has a beautiful child, and it was nice to look at where he had ended up, and get a glimpse at his life, 15 years later.

This person had been an extremely influential person to me in those formative years, I was always charmed by his intellect, creativity and well – I don’t think he’ll mind me saying – oddity. He was brilliant in very unconventional ways, a gifted actor and writer. I was flattered and honored to get attention from him as a young student.

Mulling over this reconnection, I recalled a memory of a gift that he had given me over Christmas of 1993. I was 15. It was a hardbound copy of The Little Prince, which has since become my favorite book. In fact, I just had a tattoo artist mock-up a sleeve design from the original illustrations. This person had written a very kind, very simple invocation on the front cover.

Over the last 15 years, I have read, re-read and read again this inscription and this story In some of my darkest moments, when it was all that kept me going; it showed me the journey I was – and continue to be – on. In joyous moments, it always served as a reminder of who I had fought – and was fighting – to become. The Little Prince has INDEED become one of my dear friends. The gift of this book, his story, and the thoughtful and caring inscription has meant more to me than I can ever really share.

So how does one show gratitude that matches the gift?

I wrote an email to him this morning, and explained how much the book meant to me. However, I don’t think there are words that can appropriately explain the energy of what this story and ultimately – the gift – mean to me. 

So instead, I choose to pass on this gift to others. I have given this book as a gift to my godson, family friends, other loved ones. And I write my own inscription on the inside cover for each of them. It mirrors the sentiments given to me – but with my own words. 

The energy of gratitude is the same as grief; I think that’s because we can never truly share that which we feel inside ourselves. Nobody can ever truly know our own unique energy. We can share it the best we can. But there’s something to be grieved there; a beautiful isolation that can be harnessed in a very positive way. 

Today, I am going off to do a hospital healing on a woman who recently lost her daughter in a very tragic accident. She’s having her hip replaced and is very scared about the surgery, but I sense that her fear is really about finding her gratitude – and her grief. With the passing of her (very young) daughter, her own pain has simply become too much for her body to handle – it must be corrected by literally replacing her bones. When pain and loss are so deeply held inside, the body cannot carry that burden for very long. 

Fortunately our bodies – and our spirits – constantly thrive towards growth and life. We overcome amazing obstacles every day, seeking out truth and beauty in the harshest of environments. Usually I find that just a simple “hello” to someone’s spirit – their true and unique energy behind everything else – is all it takes to jump-start growth. But to do that is discover the things in this lifetime that you are truly grateful for – and to do THAT, one must confront, experience and release theirs (and others) grief. Without grief, there can be no gratitude – and there is so much to be thankful for.

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