To Blackpill is a Choice

I was sexually assaulted multiple times between the ages of 13 and 15.

I ran away at 15, traded my body for a place to stay.

My brother died in an accident when I was 13. My mother from emphysema when I was 22. My beloved grandmother, the only person who truly loved me, from cancer when I was 17. I held her the day the doctor left a message on her answering machine sentencing her to death. We cried together, and then she died.

I lived in poverty. On food stamps. My children had secondhand clothes. So did I.

In my 40s, after a catastrophic health event knocked me off my feet for 5 years and left me with chronic damage, I was diagnosed with ADHD and later discovered autism as well.

I endured a marriage that sucked my soul dry for 21 years before I finally had the foundation, the courage and the finances all lined up at once to leap.

The dreams and visions I'd hoped on through childhood were certainly not materializing in this hell.

Improvement didn't happen by accident. I didn't endure the slog for some pre-determined time and suddenly a metaphysical finger snapped and my life was better.

I realized I had a choice.

I could be the victim I'd always been in a world where a lot of really hard things happened, or I could take self responsibility and be in charge of my own future.

The world is hard. I get the same news you do. I see the same heartache and desperation. I've lived it firsthand.

And I see how integral human agency is to the act of thriving.

I hate the new-agey spiritual bypassing twist on an age-old principle, but the reality I'm living is that this adage is true:

What we focus on expands.

It's more like your thoughts, words and actions serve up an order to the Universe for more of the same.

What it's not is a reason to ignore the bad stuff because if you just dream hard enough your life will improve and that's where some belief systems will leave you crying in the dirt wondering what you did wrong.

Right mind + intentional action = sovereignty and growth.

Here's a story that really profoundly changed my own outlook on gratitude.

My son, autistic, sensitive and a deep thinker, had a tendency even as a toddler to find the dark side of things.

I remember multiple conversations after fun outings.

Did you have fun today?

His smile would fall away as he answered, "Yes, but..."

And the "but" would always be some minor thing like a child cutting in front of him or his favorite ice cream flavor being out of stock that day.

I was deeply alarmed. I could see the trajectory. So when he was 4-years-old, I began a new nighttime routine.

As I tucked him in each night, I would ask him one question.

What are you grateful for today?

I had no idea the impact this simple exercise could have. It completely transformed his entire visage, his outlook, and his experience.

And in so doing, it transformed mine, too. I make it a daily practice to find as many things as I can to be grateful for.

The furnace comes on, and I send out a "thank you" in relief that in a world that had been so hard, now my heat comes effortlessly.

The sun warms my face just so, and I close my eyes and say a prayer of gratitude.

My child puts his dish in the dishwasher without asking, and I make sure he knows I appreciate him.

And the world has a way of rearranging itself around the reality I am calling in. The more I find to be grateful for, the more I get to be grateful for.

The world is hard. Finances are hard. I paid my mortgage and my auto loans last month, but the rest of life was on a credit card. I say this to underscore that being grateful doesn't mean you have it all.

Being grateful doesn't erase the scars or make everything magically better. It just means you choose to see what you do have, and in so doing you will almost certainly find that what you have to be grateful for increases.

Now, I choose to look to where I do have impact and use that energy in tangible ways. It's in the choosing that we found out how much control we had all along.

I decide what gets in. I put up a fence around my heart and while the gate swings easily, it swings with intention.

And when I began doing that, the stuff I had no control over became less prominent in my life.

If I can't directly impact something, I am no longer willing to spare energy to be upset about it.

The end result is still a world that improves. It just doesn't have my peace as the price paid.