Gratitude

I started this journey as a way to make the world smaller. It has always been my dream. 🌎 Social media has often left me confused, and wistful. Add to that how we often get caught up in distorted socialization in our own lives. Loneliness does not discriminate, and the mental and emotional fragility we share offers very little, if no immunity.☝🏽

In my own family, mental health and addiction struggles have cast a heavy glare, many times over. And so, in an attempt at thinking and writing about life and love and the pursuit of balance, this new journey has given me hope, especially during these (at times) very dark days. ✍🏽 I see such a beautiful purpose in social media and it moves me. 🦋

Despite my education and decades as a teacher, I am still learning much more about the human condition, wellness, and a more authentic existence.🤔 I have mastered (sort of) Google Classroom in order to remotely teach, and am now personally building my knowledge on all of the paraphernalia -- hashtags, stickers, polls, mentions, sharing of ideas -- that make Instagram what it is. 👏🏽 In creating a website I understand (again, sort of) terms like SEO and WIX ADI. 🤷🏻‍♀️The networking and dialoguing is incredible! The conversations I have been a part of -- with family members, friends, fellow writers, readers, artists, bloggers -- anyone and everyone in pursuit of MORE -- are a thing of beauty. 💕

My gratitude knows no bounds. 🙏🏽

More specifically, I am in awe of all of YOU who I see dedicated to helping others -- professional advice, acceptance and management of mental health, tools for empowerment and trauma recovery, photos and poetry that make us well up, feel-good use of humour, quotes and memes that just ‘nail it’ -- sprinkling love, empathy, and sunshine all over. 🌈 This is raw, honest, intentional use of a platform I mistakenly viewed as anything but and I am (quite often) moved to tears by it all. 😢

To give back what I am receiving -- an emotional boomerang -- and continue in this quest, I am doing a giveaway this week.🎁

We all crave happiness, and the sooner we understand it is in the little things -- which incidentally propel us to the big things -- the luckier we are.🍀 It’s also in those baby steps, and in reaching out -- moving away from the fear of societal, familial, and personal restraints -- to make change. 👣

Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Stay tuned, I am working on it. 💫