Happy Thanksgiving, friends.

I don’t know how November has treated you; for me, it’s been really rough. I won’t bore you with the details, but you can probably guess at least one of the reasons I’ve felt depressed, defeated, and discouraged. This has been the first time in my life that I’ve felt fear and anger as something physical, a feeling like fingers wrapped tightly around my throat, slowly crushing the life out of me.

It sounds dramatic, but it’s very real for me. November has been horrible.

But there have also been some undeniable highlights, and Thanksgiving is a time of year we usually try to focus on those. Yet I find myself short on gratitude right now. Short on patience. Short on grace.

How do you focus on the good when you’re being smothered by the bad? At first, you can’t, and you don’t—it’s too soon, and I think grief needs to be honored, too.

I don’t advocate rushing off to count your many blessings, and name them one by one. Darkness doesn’t go away through our efforts to ignore it and focus our attention elsewhere. We have to make an effort to change what’s happening and do our best to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

And, then, once we’ve done what we can, then it might be time to look for comfort in the small things. A woman I admire refers to these things as “what’s saving my life right now.”

Life comes at you fast, doesn’t it? Haha. And sometimes all you can do is grab on to the little things that are keeping you alive.

With that in mind, here are some things I’m grateful for right now:

• reading the right book at the right time
• Red Rock Canyon Open Space, a gorgeous park with hiking trails near our house
• living somewhere with low humidity
• Blackjack Pizza
• enamel pins of all kinds (currently wearing this and loving this, this, and this—it’s kind of an obsession right now)
• this Comfort Suites hotel in Boulder (Nathan and I stayed here this summer; check out the virtual tour)
• murder mysteries
• the return of the Hershey’s Cookies ‘n’ Mint candy bar, my absolute favorite
• sudoku puzzles
• acing an editing test in a field I don’t have direct experience in
• Doctor Who viewing marathons
• twinkle lights, which I can hang tomorrow
• you, my friends and clients

I hope today is a respite for all of us from the dark side of life. I hope it’s a celebration. May you be able to hold on to a thing or two that bring joy, and may you have a happy Thanksgiving.

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Photo by Michaela

Let me know in the comments: what are you grateful for this year?