MY GRATITUDE JOURNAL '23

Five years ago, I was seeing an ARMHS (Adult Rehab Mental Health Services) worker named Sarah who visited me once every other week to help me plan goals and give me an opportunity to check into how I was doing. She was quite young, yet very wise and supportive. One time she suggested I begin keeping a GRATITUDE JOURNAL to promote positive thinking. At the time, I was feeling anything but grateful because I was struggling with severe depression and anxiety. However, I did take her up on her offer, and I'm glad I did. So, I added a gratitude journal to the one I was already keeping for fifty years which I called IN MY LIFE.

In this new endeavor, I charted everything I was grateful for. It wasn't long before I started to feel a profound change take place inside of me. Gradually, my depression lifted, and I started feeling like myself again. I continued keeping my gratitude journal for the next two years. I eventually copied my entries into two little annual notebooks. However, when the pandemic hit in 2020, I stopped writing in it. Recently, I've begun keeping it again. Again it had an immediate positive impact on me. For one thing, it has lifted me out of another recent depressive episode.

It's funny that even when I don't feel anything positive to start with, once I write down my entries, all kinds of uplifting ideas pop into my head. And before I finish writing, I already feel better. Therefore, I intend to continue expressing my gratitude for a long time to come.