Cosmic Prose

Natasha Regehr

Category: Gratitude (Page 1 of 2)

2024 Gratitude List

October 14, 2024 / / 2 Comments

This is the tenth Gratitude List that you’ll find on Cosmic Prose, signalling ten years of daily journaling, in which I choose a few bright moments from each day to crystalize in print. Somehow I never run out of entries, and somehow each year’s list has its own special flavour.

This has been an epic year of social and professional blossoming, punctuated by meaningful moments both at home and abroad. Here’s to happiness!

  • A job that makes my days feel good
  • My car is home!
  • 5/5 days
  • When Thursday is a second Wednesday
  • The breast clinic is looking after me
  • The circus is getting a new ringleader
  • At least the underground parking lot is always there for me
  • A full day
  • Not doing schoolwork on weekends
  • Double naps
  • Getting the chores done
  • Soon I will be writing again
  • Chauffeurs
  • Competent supply teachers
  • When I think I’m in tune
  • Good health
  • A writing group
  • A third friend
  • Finishing assessments
  • Improvements
  • Less pain today
  • Finishing progress reports
  • Kale and bacon pizza
  • One day without fruits or vegetables is not a big deal
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When in Rome…

July 19, 2024 / / 0 Comments

My first impressions of Rome were not so favourable.  It seemed to be a city made of garbage and graffiti.  I saw it on the bus from the airport to the train station, and then again on the walk from the train station to the apartment.  Garbage and graffiti everywhere.

“You’re going to love Europe,” I told my niece.  “Everything here is so pretty.  The ornate buildings.  The immaculate gardens.  The cobblestone streets.  Everything.

No, not everything.  Definitely not the trajectory from the Termini train station to our humble abode.  Rome, I thought, is a dirty, unpalatable city.  I’m not so sure I like it here.

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Lest We Forget: Pass it On

July 6, 2024 / / 4 Comments

I did not wear a poppy last year on Remembrance Day.  It wasn’t a statement: I simply forgot.

But as I learned today on the shores of Dieppe, forgetting is a statement.

Yesterday I visited the famed Flanders Fields of John McCrae’s poem.  Rows of crosses, row on row.  Thousands and thousands of them.  Each representing a boy-child, son, husband, father, lost on the Ypres Salient in World War I, gaining a mere eight kilometres for the Allies through the many months of brutal attacks.  Stones marked “A soldier of the Great War, known unto God” because their bodies could not be identified in the carnage.  Men lost to the first crippling gas attacks, in the days before gas masks.  Men whose body parts could not be sorted from the others and reassembled for a proper burial.  Men who died, and died, and died again, not knowing the outcome of the war that was supposed to end all wars.

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2023 Gratitude List

October 10, 2023 / / 1 Comment

It was over 15 years ago that I came upon the idea of keeping a gratitude list, and since then I have maintained the habit of taking a few minutes each evening to reflect on the goodness of the day.  Some days are naturally radiant, and sometimes it requires some serious excavating to find a glimmer of light.  But without fail, I have always found something for which to be thankful.

Nine years ago I began the tradition of posting the year’s list to my blog each Thanksgiving.  It’s a way for me to travel through the ups and downs of the year through a lens of positivity and good humour, and to share with others the little sparkles that have sustained me through that time.  I’ll warn you — it’s a rather long read; but maybe it will inspire you to find the sparkles in your year as well.  Happy Thanksgiving!

  • Advice is just advice
  • Triage
  • When things are calm
  • When conversations go well
  • When I finish reading OSRs
  • When I remember I have pretzels in the car
  • When there is no longer a dead squirrel on my driveway
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2022 Gratitude List

October 13, 2022 / / 1 Comment

It’s a few days late, but here is my annual Gratitude List — 365 days’ worth of small things noticed and appreciated. I now have 12 of these lists inhabiting my hard drive, and each one gives a snapshot of a year that is unlike those that came before. This year’s seems to be dominated by work, as I started yet another new job, and then another. There is always much to learn, much to celebrate, and much to leave behind as a fresh, new year unfolds. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

  • the lost, found
  • the smell of leaves under the tires of my bike, the weight of the handlebars, the whir of the wheels
  • pedalling, noticing, breathing
  • all of the things that are better than they were
  • I, who am competent…
  • I, who rocked that lesson
  • and she who left it before it fell apart
  • when the magic letters come together to make words
  • report cards done five days early
  • a down duvet
  • zoom friends
  • deliverance
  • the paperwork
  • a long prep period to rewrite my report card comments
  • when they learn things
  • the rain put a quick end to a very painful outdoor math lesson
  • I caught S prancing to the office for a banana
  • I kept last year’s sketchbooks
  • I caught the last half of my French class
  • tag is fun
  • L had a good day
  • The yellow water on the floor was largely ignored
  • extra quizzes
  • schoolyard coding
  • hamburger soup
  • a hair shuttle
  • an autumn walk to the Value Mart
  • getting some planning done
  • approval
  • they’re always good for no good reason
  • the explosion happened on someone else’s watch
  • I slept a long sleep
  • I’ve been other places, done other things, lived other lives
  • there is more to come
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2020 Gratitude List: A Covid Thanksgiving

October 14, 2020 / / 3 Comments

Did you know that Daniel Defoe, author of the iconic Robinson Crusoe, also wrote a chilling Journal of the Plague Year? This year’s Gratitude List is a sort of Plague Journal as well, with a five-month preface and a seven-month inventory of hidden kindnesses in changing times.

And so, from 2019’s indoor festivals to 2020’s back yard Thanksgiving, here are 578 tiny treasures from an otherwise tumultuous year:

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2019 Gratitude List

October 18, 2019 / / 0 Comments

What a year.

So many changes.  So much growth. Such very different lives.

Here, just a few days late, is my annual Gratitude List.  A few items a day, for 365 days, to breathe a little positivity into the last wakeful moments of each evening.  

What varied worlds this list represents, and what unexpected appreciations.  At the beginning, Devan getting me “Mr. Propre” (Moroccan Mr. Clean) to save me an unpleasant outing to the grocery store on a Monday night; at the end, the sounds of laughter around my mom’s table, with all of the family gathered for our first Thanksgiving together in four years.  In between, everything from donkey treats to doodle books.

Intrigued? Walk with me through a year of thankfulness:

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2018 Gratitude List

October 9, 2018 / / 0 Comments

I have a little book, in which I record the small happinesses of each day.  It started a dozen years ago when my life was miserable, as a way of ending my days with thankfulness instead of bitterness.  The misery has long since passed, but the habit of searching for and preserving morsels of goodness remains.

I write a few words in my little book each night, and publish them once a year.  In so doing, I find a perspective that eludes me when I am absorbed in the minutia of my jam-packed life.

Here, then, is my 2018 Gratitude list.  It’s been an epic year: Continue reading

2017 Gratitude List

November 23, 2017 / / 0 Comments

As much as I try to think of new things to be thankful for every single day, I can’t help but notice a few themes (read: blatant reiterations) creeping into this year’s Gratitude List.  Can you spot them?

Bon courage!

  • Efficient meetings
  • Not being disregarded
  • Comfortable hiking boots
  • French is starting!
  • Patient housemates
  • Errands accomplished
  • Surprise sales
  • French again!
  • Knowing my passport number but not my bank account number
  • Yin was just right
  • And so were my exercise clothes
  • Hatha, oh hatha
  • Not going to the mall twice in one day
  • Leaving for Italy soon!

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