What are you grateful for?

A happy new year and welcome to 2021!

What a year we just had, if you are reading this, I am thankful that you made it as no one anticipated the whirlwind that we survived in the form of COVID-19. I remember January 2020, my husband and I had made all these plans but with time and growing need to reassess our hopes and aspirations for the year, we are just thankful to be alive come January 1, 2021.

Reflecting on the past year and specifically on gratitude is something I feel is really important because it creates a culture of appreciating the little things that we may have taken for granted. This is a habit I have consciously developed over the last few years but decided in the last year, to practice it with my children. I felt it was a much-needed exercise for them to develop the heart of giving thanks even when things appeared not to be going how they would prefer. Let’s just say I was trying to teach them the art of “finding light in the dark” because life isn’t a bed of roses.

However, this year, in honesty, I wasn’t prepared for the answers I got so I guess my biggest lesson is “be careful what you ask for”. Throughout the pandemic and lockdown, I had not really thought to ask my girls how they had been impacted by the changes happening around them. Even I had not stopped to think about how it had impacted me, let alone anyone else around me. We were all literally in survival mode. Yes, we talked about it a lot, because frankly, what else was there to talk about, but now I know, I didn’t fully appreciate how deeply it affected my children.

So we get to the gratitude party as I will refer to it, we sit down in a nice circle, then with full optimism, I asked confidently “So Tumi and Toni, its New years day, 1st day in 2021, have you had a chance to think about what you are grateful for?”

My younger daughter Toni went first, “Of course mummy, I have a lot to be grateful for.”

Wide-eyed and with enthusiasm filling my heart, I asked: “so tell me what you are grateful for then”.

She says with clarity listing a number of things I naturally expected her to say “family, school, and friends”. Then she says, “I am also grateful that God is giving me a new beginning because Corona took too much from me last year”.

Ha!!!! Say what young lady?

She sat up and with all seriousness, and said:
“Mummy, Corona has been the worst thing to ever happen to me. I haven’t been able to do anything I love; it took away my best friend too”. You see, the girls moved to a new school and they didn’t get the chance to say goodbye to their friends properly. Again; another loss I hadn’t processed how deeply it had affected them, although I talked them through the reasons for the change.

Now at this point, it is a crying fest. I looked at my older daughter who turned 10 in December and asked her “do you feel this way too?”

And not sure why I asked because at that moment it dawned on me that the changes that had occurred in the last year were quite significant not only for me but actually more for them.

They both cried for a bit while I let them rest their heads on my chest and consoled them. But nothing was going to spoil this gratitude party.

When they calmed, I looked at them and said “Sorry I never asked how you felt about all these changes and I am glad we talked about it today. I am so proud of how well you two got through it, you are my super-heroes”.

We talked about the need to look beyond our current circumstance and be grateful for life; how change is constant in life so Corona will not last forever and the need to stay strong together so when it is over, we can celebrate the new things we have learnt.

This exercise has only reinforced what I am hoping to build with my children, which is creating the culture to have a voice, unpick and make sense of the things that happen to us even when it makes no sense to anyone else. I can say, we had a blast in the end and our gratitude party was a hit.

Next stop, our vision board parry! Now that will be a story for another day, but for now, I wish you all a fulfilling year ahead.

In 2020, we lost, we gained, opportunities came and went but one thing remains, God has been so good to me and my family, for that alone, I am super grateful.
“Gratitude turns what we have into enough”