A new (for me) daily practice

My weekly letter to you

Hello, everyone,

How are you feeling this week?

I’ve been writing and writing all week for a big research project, trying to remember to stretch, get up, walk outside, look after my poor old back. It’s definitely feeling so much better - and thank you for all your kindness and the tips you shared.

I thought I’d share with you my new daily practice too.

Although I know that there’s a growing body of research on the positive correlation between gratitude and wellbeing, gratitude practices have never really resonated with me.

Over the years, I’ve experimented with several gratitude practices in my journal. I spent a few months writing ‘three good things’ at the end of each day. When feeling low or a bit sorry for myself, I’ve tried writing a gratitude list, which sometimes seems to shift my mood a little. But honestly, it has never really felt quite right.

I now realise that the main problem I had was with that word, ‘gratitude.’ It doesn’t work for me. It feels puritanical and finger-wagging, like something I should be able to feel if I was a truly good girl. It’s a voice in my head saying: You’ve got so much to be grateful for, Sophie. So just get on with it and stop moaning.

It doesn’t feel very kind.

But grief moves in mysterious ways and lately, some days, it has pulverised me, got me in its grip and wrung me out, left me feeling small and alone and scared.

I knew that I needed something.

Just a little something to help me find stillness and comfort. A space to help me to honour my feelings of grief and loss, privately, quietly.

And one day I was sitting with my notebook and I started to write the words ‘thank you.’

Thank you feels right for me. Thank you feels like something I want to say.

So I’ve started coming here, early in the morning, and sitting at my desk and writing my thank you. Some days, I begin by writing ‘thank you, thank you’ over and over and it feels like a kind of prayer. But always, there are so many things and people and feelings to say thank you for. They flow onto the page.

And I find myself saying thank you for everything. I thank the feelings of grief and loss, because they remind me that I’m here to notice them and feel them. I thank the back pain because it reminds me to slow down and breathe.

Thank you has become my ritual. Thank you is my dance with death and life. Thank you helps me to let go of a deep part of myself and grow into this new stage of life, one without Dad. He is always there somewhere, each morning, in my thank you’s. I realise as I write this that thanking him is a way of saying the goodbye that I never had a chance to say. Another thank you. Another goodbye. Every morning.

And I realise that I am truly grateful for this chance to say thank you.

I want to thank you too, for reading and receiving my words, and always with such kindness.

I hope that, if you haven’t tried it before and you find yourself needing a little something, a little space for you this morning, then thank you might offer some sustenance to you too.

With love,
Sophie x

PS Here’s a ‘Thank you’ playlist I made, in case you need a boost. (I don’t write to this. I can’t write to anything, really, especially anything with lyrics, but sometimes I dance and it makes me smile.)