Unbridled Gratitude: Blessing the Beauty and the Grit

One of my favorite practices I love to work with this time of year is a deeper Gratitude practice. The practice includes setting aside reflective journaling time to:

• pause, 
• reflect, 
• and connect with the experiences of the past year to be grateful for. 

While we often can easily list the “big things” like the year I’m thankful for, such as: 

• New growth - bringing together a 3-year project of creating, writing, editing, and polishing up my second publishing project so that it ready to share its wisdom and healing energy with all of you - the Sacred Witness Oracle suite and its three sacred tools:
• 56-card Oracle Deck,
• In-depth Guidebook that shares healing invitations and inquiries rooted in Somatic processing, 
• and the companion book Trauma Informed Enlightenment - a soul companion and roadmap for deep reconnection and embodiment of your True Self through the healing power of the Sacred Witness.
• Family - my girls are growing up into such amazing young women full of love, passion, and a desire to create kinder spaces wherever they are. 
• My work and the privilege to witness and be with clients as they ignite their own passions, dreams, and courage to tend to the past wounds and conditioned versions of themselves with love, compassion, and connection over correction, unbridling their system to move from love not fear. 
• The amazing staff, volunteers, mentors and coaches, and patrons that help keep Unbridled Change running and offering such amazing services and home for our equine partners. Their dedication and support make everything possible from arena sessions with clients to the amazing online community and offerings that I wouldn’t be able to offer without their support…

The reflection practice asks us to go a little deeper, and invite our inner guidance to help us forward moments that we often overlook and recognize the different types of grace, magic, and light that have filled our life the past year especially in the unlikely events that we often hold as moments and experiences we would rather have not had to walk with. 

And this is where the practice holds hidden jewels of healing. 

Discovering Gratitude in the Unexpected

In addition to writing the items on our list that we love, the practice invites us to invite gratitude to flow to all moments of the past year, including the ones we often don’t consider as things to be incredibly grateful for; helping different aspects of us that are stuck in judgments, resentments, disappointments, and grief be able to witness these events and interactions from a different point of view so that we can connect with the medicine held within them. 

This aspect of the practice compassionately asks us to engage with one of the hardest parts of any healing and growth journey, unlocking gratitude for all aspects of our life - the amazing, good, and yes, the not so great and downright “ugly” parts of life too. 

Where the Deeper Reflection Begins

The reflection isn’t asking us to dwell in the unrest of the grittier parts of the year, but to bring a sense of compassion, understanding, and ultimately to help us release them. I support us in witnessing new points of view, insights, and the graces of forgiveness, peace, and hope, perhaps for the first time. It helps us weave together the tapestry of events and find the threads that we hadn’t seen before in new ways, giving us an opportunity to find our working edges, discover the hidden aspects of us that are still lost in the trance of unworthiness, fear, self-doubt, and pain so that we can consciously tend to them rooted in love. 

Every year I work through this reflection practice, I am in awe of the opportunities that it brings forward to help me rebalance and restore more inner health, the ability to see where grace is always present, especially in the places I didn’t always feel it. Little by little, throughout the month with each entry I make, I’m asked to compassionately unbridle from the protective mechanisms and beliefs that were holding me hostage, even in the most subtle ways, entangled in trauma-responses and shadow reactions based in fear, loss, and scarcity. 

If this practice is calling to you, I invite you to begin your own gratitude journaling practice. You might be surprised that the gifts of true choice can provide you with new ways to: 

• Hold the past, present, and future
• Experiencing what it feels like to move from a place of greater inner freedom
• And the ability to be in alignment with the medicine of gratitude and blessing, even with the grit and experiences that we would rather not be having. 

Offering you light, love, and JOY,
Michelle