Celebrating the Little Things: Day 1-Breathe

Today I am grateful for my ongoing recovery from alcoholism and the conversations I have with others in recovery. They bring reminders and clarity that I so often need.

The Little Things, a practice from www.gratefulness.org, is now underway for the next seven days. The focus for Day 1 was "Breathe."

This truly is where it all starts, and where it all ends. If my awareness can start with a breath, and return to a breath, inhaling and exhaling slowly, I am at least pausing for a brief moment and paying kind attention to the life-giving oxygen flow and our amazing respiratory systems.

In these times of the COVID-19 pandemic, a largely respiratory illness, we are reminded of the importance of healthy lungs and the ability to breathe. Something we do thousands of times a day without even thinking about it, until we are given a reason to think about it, or an illness that takes the ease of breathing from us.

I think of my sister Mary Jo, who had lung cancer and then metastatic breast cancer in her lungs. She had to be on oxygen at different times, and I considered what it must have been like for her to struggle to breathe. That is not something I have ever experienced, unless I was exercising and purposely straining and pushing my breathing to improve fitness and lung capacity.

Mary Jo drew her last breath last June. We will all draw a last breath sooner or later.

In the meantime, I will return to this simple, but very significant, bodily function to ground myself in busy times, to give gratitude for clean air, to bring myself back to right here, right now.

Breathe. Surrender. Now.

Photo by Evie S./Unsplash