Finding gratitude in uncommon places
You’re tired. You were up all night with an unsettled child.
Why does it feel that these nights always come before a big day?
You wonder how you will get your tribe dressed, fed, packed and arrive at the hospital in time.
But you forge ahead. You move clothes over tight limbs to get your child dressed, while balancing their entire body’s weight. You lift them in and out of specialised steel equipment.
You make lunches, blend food, administer medications, prepare paperwork.
{You breathe.}
You arrive at the hospital. Everything looks so familiar, like well worn hallways of your family home.
You wonder what life would have been like if a ‘diagnosis’ never hit.
You sit and wait in the waiting room like hundreds of times before. You’re feeling extra sensitive just from the lack of rest and too much caffeine.
So you look for gratitude in all the seemingly ‘wrong places’…how on earth could I find gratitude when I need to attend hundreds of hospital visits? It’s the last place I want to be… but then again its the place I need to be for my daughter..
So I look for gratitude …
In pre-operation rooms, to post-op wards, to neurology meetings to orthopaedic reviews.
To physiotherapy sessions where your daughter works incredibly hard to just open her left hand, or bare her own weight with the support of a therapist.
You find gratitude in a speech pathologist session knowing your child cannot speak, and again will have to work so hard to learn how to communicate without a voice.
You find gratitude in the friendships of mums you just met, walking similar paths.
You find gratitude in knowing that no matter how unwell your child gets, you still get to hold them in your arms.
You find gratitude in seeing your child gain a new skill, no matter how small.
You begin to learn how gratitude unlocks the stress of even the most testing and tiring days and most importantly find gratitude that tomorrow is a brand new day.
Natalie is a Yoga & Meditation Teacher, Coach, Writer and Speaker. Natalie is a proud mama to her two beautiful daughters, Grace and Chiara. Her youngest daughter Chiara suffered a stroke and has been left with a serious brain injury, which has altered the the life of her entire family.
