Kimberlee K.

I sat down to write a blog post about thankfulness. About noticing.

I wanted to go through all of the tiny things in my day and in my body. The parts of my life I might not pay attention to or notice, especially when a different problem is on my mind, but when I focus in, I realize are so, so good.

Like when you have a cold and you realize how lucky you were before you got congested. So you start making those promises of, as soon as I can breathe out of my nose again, I’m never going to take it for granted.

But I do. I always do. We all do.

So I set out to write a blog post about all the different things I might not notice in the day to day. Things I might never full appreciate until they’re aching or gone. But the more I thought about this post, the more I noted down things I could say and point out, the more it felt like biased bragging. A highlighting of things I believe to be “good” or “normal” or “healthy” that might not be true for everyone.

My 100% healthy likely doesn’t look the same as someone else’s. So it just didn’t feel right to say, here’s a list about everything going right for me. At least not a list I wrote down and posted on the internet.

BUT it did feel right to make a note of it to myself. To sit on my couch, with no television, no music, no podcast—nothing on and no distractions—and simply notice the blessings in my life. The things that I’m thankful for. The many parts and pieces of my body that are working correctly and causing me no pain. The things I am able to do, the parts of the world I have access to, and the people that love me—people I can pick up the phone and call.

This check-in would look different for every single person. The things we love, hate, long for, and wish were different vary for everyone, and it doesn’t always benefit someone to be told what they should be grateful for. We need to see it for ourselves. We need to take the time to notice. We need to make that list and brag about ourselves to ourselves.

To say, yes, there are parts of my life that are crazy and chaotic—things that are going wrong, per se—but here are all the things that are going RIGHT.

And my list was longer than I thought. Longer than I might have said if asked the question offhandedly. So often when we see a friend in passing and ask, “how are you?” we hustle to the quickest summary—“so busy!”—and pair it with raised eyebrows, a shaken head or slumped shoulders. And that’s valid, things ARE crazy, and busy, and stressful.

But there’s also that long list of good things if we’re willing to look at it. Longer if we break it down to the tiniest things. Like, my thumb doesn’t hurt, and neither does my pinkie. And hey, my OTHER thumb doesn’t hurt, and neither does THAT pinkie.

Silly things that, unless forced to notice, we might just expect from our day to day lives rather than appreciate.

I know I was a wreck for a week or two when I jammed my thumb in high school. It was ALL I could think about. But today, both thumbs are just thumbing. They’re slapping the spacebar on my keyboard over and over as I type this, without reservation or pain.

Thanks, thumbs.

Thanks to a lot of things, actually.

My list is pretty dang long.