Gratitude and Grief

I’ve spent most of this morning in tears.

I honestly hadn’t given the date much thought, I had meetings planned and things to do.

Like many of us, I would prefer to look away and get on with all things I should be doing but I read on because of three words: “Please Read It” by New York journalists who lived through it.

So today I stopped doing all the things for an hour and read about the last moments of the people in the two towers, painstakingly recreated. I encourage you to as well, especially alongside this beautiful story of grief and the rebuilding of a life, about Jacob Campbell and his grandmother who raised him.

The tears are not just for the sorrow and pain that I was reading about. They are a response to a dear friend’s unexpected loss yesterday and for all that she has suffered this year. They are tears of relief for someone I love beyond words, who has started to move away from their own dark days. And they are tears of frustration about once again encountering a world last night that tried to seamlessly blend American high school sports, over-the-top noise, nationalism, mean-spirited competitiveness and prayers to God. It felt jarring to me, even after 16 years in Texas, and I was left not frustrated about our game loss, but about an America and Americans that I love, but that I don’t always understand.

What I do understand though, is where our spirits meet: “Get It Done”.

In that sense, I was born Texan. Dallas in particular, is a place where things get done. So instead of being left with a dour sense of what a state the world is in, for me, it is a call to action.

Above all, it is a call to Gratitude.

Gratitude that I have this moment, this life, this day. I have talents, time and space to act on both small and big things to make my own and others’ lives better, easier, or just a little kinder. I have the incredible honour of working alongside people every day that, as social entrepreneurs (or just entrepreneurs doing the hardest of work), see the suffering, cry the tears of sorrow and frustration, and then get up and do something about it.

In the next few weeks, I will be sharing about some of those incredible people and organizations, and what you can do about it too. And today I want to start with someone who has reminded me that changing our lives often starts with changing the conversations we have with ourselves.

Read more here:

https://dancingcuppa.substack.com/p/gratitude-and-grief?r=91o4wv&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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