by: Lauren Jonik

Autumn is a time of harvest—of gathering up the fruits of the year’s labor. It typically is a time when we come together to acknowledge the nourishment before us. A recent conversation with a friend sparked me thinking about how closely the concept of abundance is linked to impermanence. My friend mentioned that one day, she likely would be going to her children’s homes for Thanksgiving instead of them coming to hers. It would be different. So often, change comes in the form of a surprise—like a coin hidden in the bottom of a pocket of last year’s coat. You knew it was there once, but forgot until it was time for it to be exchanged for something else—something that reminds you of what you have had and what you still have.

Much like self-care, “gratitude” has become a trendy buzzword. But, it can be a worthy endeavor to have a gratitude practice—I started out with one myself two decades ago when a good friend gave me Sarah Ban Breathnach’s Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy. At the time, I was living with the serious and daunting effects of Lyme disease. I needed all of the comfort and joy I could get.  I remember finding the passages in the book calming, as was the pink edge of the thick spine that sat on my bookshelf at eye level. I had positioned my bed so that even when I was too sick to get up or to read, I could look at my book collection from afar. I spent many years wondering if my life would change and hoping that any changes would be for the better.

Books were one link to that hope. It’s not an uncommon narrative to find a seemingly immovable obstacle in your path only eventually to find your way through it. Protagonists in books had done it, why couldn’t I? Over time, gratitude became one of many tools I accessed to navigate my world. At my sickest, the only thing—literally, the absolute only thing—I could do was write. So I did. And, wrote and wrote and wrote. I wrote my story with a happier and healthier reality than the world I was living in. When gratitude became less of a practice and more of a way of life—when I learned how to appreciate every tiny detail of the magic of existence (spoiler: none of it is tiny), I was able to walk into what I had dreamed of. Through a series of events I still can’t quite explain, I wrote my way back into the world.

But, because there are few prescriptive remedies that don’t require on-going work and commitment to growth (and even then there are no guarantees), my worlds have changed multiple times throughout my life. Coming to terms with the nature of impermanence and continually learning to make friends with it has enhanced my definition of gratitude. It also has reminded me time and time again to dig in deep and translate that emotion into tangible acts. The alchemy of gratitude becoming service and service becoming connection is magical to me. The spiral goes around and around.

My closest friends know that there is a pretty high likelihood that once they tell me when their birthday is, they’ll be getting a card from me on their birthday for the rest of their lives. A real card. In the mail. With a stamp and all.

When the tables turned and I requested mail from them—it arrived in droves. My elderly grandmother (who passed away 3 Thanksgivings ago) had a health scare about 2 years before she died. A recent widow, I knew that she was going through a lot, so I posted on social media asking if any of my good friends would be willing to send her a get well card. I knew that mail would make her happy (genetics can predict a lot). A week later, she told me that she had gotten a few cards. Two weeks later, she called and asked me in astonishment, “Do you really know all these people?”

“Yes, they’re my friends,” I explained.

“Well, you sure have some good friends.”

Thirty cards later, she was still in awe that people she didn’t know would take time to write to “an old bag,” to use her own words. Her sense of humor never left her. She wrote thank you notes to as many people as she could. Gratitude spiraled into abundance, which spiraled back into gratitude. But, impermanence was a guest at the party, too.

My friend Daisy and my grandmother struck up a pen pal friendship that became ongoing, unbeknownst to me. I didn’t find out until my aunt mentioned it in passing after she found the letters while cleaning out my grandmother’s possessions.

“You know, your friend Daisy was really good to Gram,” my aunt said. “She always wrote something uplifting. She kept writing to her.”

There are some changes we know are coming, but there are always ones we don’t expect. Gram died in 2015 at age 94. Daisy died in 2017 at age 42. With both of them gone, I remain especially grateful that I was able to be a catalyst by doing something very tiny that brought joy into their lives—even if momentarily. These kinds of opportunities abound. I’m forever drawn to the idea that we nourish ourselves by nourishing each other with our actions, words and presence. It is the one of the greatest ways to feast upon life itself—or at least, make it all a little sweeter.

Main photo courtesy of: MabelAmber

Once upon a time photo courtesy of: Ramdlon

Daisy photo by: Gerd Altmann

.Lauren Jonik is a writer and photographer in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s, The Manifest-Station, Two Cities Review, Amendo, The Establishment, Bustle, Role Reboot, Ravishly and more. Follow her on Twitter: @laurenjonik