Gratitude for things Covid has given me

I’m really practiced at gratitude. It’s with me all the time. I took an entire year to practice gratitude and that lesson has stayed with me in an automatic way.

These past couple of weeks there’s been a lot of articles and discussions marking the anniversary of when everything changed from covid. My local newspaper had a headline that I found particularly striking: “Marking a year of lockdown: this is what loss feels like”.

Writing lists has been a powerful tool of mine. Something about taking the time, sitting with a blank page, and filling it, and seeing the result really changes things for me. And then for additional power I will read my list and share it with others. Speaking it aloud in front of witnesses further changes my thinking.

It’s so easy to write the opposite of these lists. Of everything that sucks or was lost. Our minds tend to be attracted to those narratives. That’s why making lists of the opposite has been such a powerful tool for me.

I’d like to share the list I wrote this past week, titled “Gifts Covid has given to me”:

• I will likely never have this amount of time as a tight family unit again.
• We watch TV together every night.
• We watched the entire series of ER together (over 300 episodes).
• Robin will explain a lot of the medical jargon to the kids as we watch
• My being banned in the US was accommodated by everything being moved online.
• I attended some fantastic events that I’d have been unable to if they remained in person in the US.
• The above were tremendous period of growth for me that I would have missed out on.
• I have gratitude for my personal situation, that has made riding out covid more bearable.
• Because of the move to online, my impact on others has been increased significantly. I have learned to inhabit power on my Zoom stage.
• Every morning I take my kids for a “ride to nowhere” for some normalcy and I know we will look back fondly on that in the future. That we did things like that.
• We’ve had to get creative with how to have fun and celebrate.
• When I’ve lost things, like going to a nice dinner for my birthday, it motivated me to ask myself how else can I celebrate, which resulted in me making a list I’m grateful for about all the great things that happened to me the past year and reflect how 2020 was the best year of my life.
• I’ve learned that Gavin is a very self-motivated student. He is doing his best without needing me to push him.
• I’m grateful Connor is grateful that with virtual school, it will mean when he returns to physical school his behavior problems will be long forgotten that he has much shame about.
• It made me so grateful for my decision to put a pool in a few years ago.
• I was being worn out by cooking, and discovered HelloFresh and it ended up being a great family activity with everything laid out simply so it’s easy to ask the kids to do their parts.
• Going through covid has made me feel good about myself. In a lot of ways I was “made for covid”. How I embrace not knowing, the unknown, the lack of certainty, the resourcefulness. I have thrived.
• If I can feel gratitude all the time during as period of history like covid, I can get through anything.
• I have learned that it doesn’t serve anyone to get bogged down in the shit. I did not cause someone else’s suffering. I acknowledge that not everyone is doing great and covid has been devastating to a lot of people, and lots of people have died, and at the same time I can acknowledge my gratitude for my own personal situation. The world is best served by the strongest version of me.
• I am grateful that covid has given me reason to create this list. It is powerful in its volume and truth.

Thank you for reading my list.

Who benefits from taking your own moment to create a powerful list of gratitude?