Hello Readers, Writers, and Friends,

Today’s is a rambley update.

Surgery went well. I am healing nicely if slowly. I never thought I would crave going to the gym, or being able to make a Costco run on my own. The restlessness is the hardest part. Forcing myself into a kind of stillness to which I have not been accustomed in many years is taxing.

I found myself dancing to Christmas music the other day, realized about halfway through the song, “I should not be doing this,” and then spent the next day dealing with a resurgence of pain. I had no idea I was such an instant gratification junky. There are just some systems that can’t be hacked. Even in the age of same day, laparoscopic surgery recovery takes time.

Which is why you will see no fiction here today.

My mental state has been on a rollercoaster this week and a half. I could push myself to pull a few prompts, but I’m not sure what would come out would be intelligible let alone worth anyone’s time.

And though Thanksgiving has passed, my mind has been ruminating on gratitude. What does it mean to be grateful? What am i really grateful for?

Gratitude is one of those deceptive feeling words that doesn’t really have meaning until is coupled with action. How grateful can we be for people we don’t cherish? How grateful are we for a well prepared meal when we only engage in that kind of attentive planning and execution once or twice a year? Gratitude must be enacted.

I’ve learned this in a very visceral and difficult way this week.

I am grateful, not only for my health, but for the ability to recover my health. In the “Age of COVID” we’ve watched as many people succumb to a virus that passes over others. In less data driven, superstitious times we would have attributed such things to the hand of God or Fate or Death in its personified form. But numbers being what they are, we know that certain aspects of lifestyle seriously damage our ability to fight infection, to repair cells, to rebound in the face of physical assault.

If I had not made the choices I did after my last son was born, if I had not been determined to understand my health in a deep and personal way, my healing wouldn’t be sailing along like it is now.

So this year, what I am profoundly grateful for is the resilience I have built in my body, and the capacity to heal I have acquired through the difficult choices of diet alteration, movement, exercise, and cultivated mental buoyancy. I look forward to the time when I can get back to building the physical strength that is keeping me afloat on this river of healing. I feel like I have so much farther to go. But I am doing my best to make the most of this moment.

I hope you are all well. That health and healing are among the things that cross your mind often in the most positive ways.

I’ll see you next week.

~Anika