A Thank You Letter to Myself
…and why you should do one for yourself too.
July 1st, 2021, and I am unemployed and studying for the Real Estate exam. Yesterday I lost every single key I own. Keys to 2 cars and keys to 2 homes. Am I stressed? No, not really and I would like to say Thank You for the work that 2020 and the first half of 2021 Maria have done to get me to the point where I can lose even the keys to a Truck I am selling and say, “Ok, how do I solve this”, without first going into a full-fledged panic attack because my mind is telling me how (insert EVERY horrible adjective you can think of for the next five seconds…5…4…3…2…1, yeah all of those) I am because that’s how I used to run things in my head. Tiring, I know. Even just writing about it I had to go take a break.
My point is this: Knowing myself for the last 32 years I am the person I know the most and this cannot be said by everyone. In the fact that I have decided to sit with myself slowly and surely getting comfortable within my head, cleaning my mind’s house when it was necessary. I can recognize the differences between my past reactions and my present actions. Now I am still not fully comfortable with some things and yet I still make mistakes but I am learning and through this learning from the beginning of Covid on April 13th, 2020 when I closed shop at what was my dream job at the time. I have tried my best to push myself to be a better person. I do NOT want some trophy, this is a Thank you letter to myself, this is enough for me:
- Thank you for reading the books we have, and journaling the things we have.
- Thank you for the sacrifices we have done so we can afford a therapist, I know many cannot afford it.
- Thank you for realizing that it IS ok to outgrow friends and in some cases family.
- Thank you for putting us first and realizing that to feel true empathy, we need to feel empathy for ourselves first.
- Thank you for trying our best to eat right when we can.
- Thank you for taking the breaks when we need them.
- Thank you for trying once again to work for someone else just to confirm that we are NOT about that life.
- Thank you for starting to work on our own business and striving for what is best for us.
- Thank you for realizing that Food/Cooking isn't our only passion.
- Thank you for saying Thank you every morning and being grateful even sometimes just for the running water, Moscow's food, and the honey we have in the house, these can be commodities.
- Thank you for dreaming big every day and even on the hard days looking at our vision board to remind ourself that our future is still ahead and it IS beautiful.
- Thank you for not focusing on the past anymore and realizing that we are not the person we were told we were.
- Thank you for starting our hiking hobby, dreaming, and working towards summiting some larger-than-life peaks, literally and figuratively.
- Thank you for standing up for us, when we need it.
The act of saying Thank you has been one that is once and once again claimed to bring joy to us, we say thank you to our family, friends, and even people in the streets to bring them joy, to show them that we are grateful for whatever it is that they are doing, even if it’s their job (talking about customer service people here). Many books say to even say Thank You to the world, energies, luck, spirits, deities, even “good” consequences in our lives but never have I read anyone that told me to say Thank You to me.
Who has sat through my worst moments, holding me while I cry soothing my inner child, feeling my emotions? Who celebrates my achievements the hardest and best by taking me to a new unexplored coffee shop, bookstore, or mountain trail? Who makes sure I drink water, eat breakfast, and have dinner? Who makes sure I shower well and not just out of a sense of obligation when depression gets the best of me? I DO! I DO all of these things? So, I deserve my attention and my Thanks first and foremost. Everyone else can be doing things because they want to but I am with me 100% of the time, even when I don’t want to, so to me, I say:
Thank You for sticking through it and Thank You for being there for us.
