Gratitide List #9

After about a month of traveling every weekend, I am so happy to be home (even though we have a leaky ceiling and the work on our building continues relentlessly. It seems to me that our apartment is worse off now than it was before they starting trying to fix our building! End of rant.)

I love my job and that I get to travel because of it but there comes a time when staying in hotels and eating out makes you feel yucky. And so I am savouring this time of being able to go regularly to my yoga classes and cook wholesome meals and NOT eat out as much as possible.

I’ve been learning a lot about food lately. Apparently eating healthy is a LOT harder than I thought it was because so much of the food that we buy is labeled misleadingly. Low-fat. Sugar-free. With Real Fruits!

Um, not so much. But that’s the beginning of another long rant so I will stop myself here and move on to the things I am grateful for this week:

// Homemade granola! (See picture above) You guys, I am so proud of myself for this. Yesterday I bought a large glass jar and put all the granola in and I literally cradled the jar for a few minutes. I would have cuddled with it in bed if I could but that would have been a bit much so I left on the table instead so I could wake up and admire it again.

So why is this such a big deal? Well, because I’m not a morning person so as much I would love to wake up early and make my hubby a healthy breakfast, it just doesn’t happen. So he ate cereal for a while and then we had this nagging feeling that cereal isn’t as good as they make it out to be. And then we moved to oats and we realised that oats is rubbish too. And then Rob started making himself some scrambled eggs which he likes to burn a little bit and the smell of that drives me nuts!

So I made granola. Super duper healthy granola. No gluten. No sugar. No preservatives.

And it was so easy. Check it out here.

// Daring Greatly by Brené Brown. I watched her TEDTalk (check it out below) a while ago and loved it and then a friend of mine Kate Gazaway who runs a totally awesome Photography NGO and writes the most awesome updates on social media posted up this book and so I got myself a copy and am loving it so far. This part that I read last night particularly resonated with me:

Vulnerability is the birthplace of  love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path. 

I know this is hard to believe, especially when we’ve spent most of our lives thinking that vulnerability and weakness are synonymous, but it’s true. I define vulnerability as uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. With that definition in mind, let’s think about love. Waking up every day and loving someone who may stay in our lives or may leave without a moment’s notice, who may be loyal to the day they die or betray us tomorrow – that’s vulnerability. Love is uncertain. It’s incredibly risky. Yes, it’s scary and yes, we’re open to being hurt, but can you imagine your life without loving or being loved?

That’s pretty spot on, right? There’s something so liberating about reading truths like this.