Gratitude for Books, Reading and Google

I've been wanting to start a blog for a long time. Every once in a while, I will be riding home in my car, thinking about something I've read or heard recently and I'll start a discussion with no one in my head. Seems like a bit of a waste to have it stop there. So I think I'll start this out as a gratitude journal entry.

The first thing to mention is that I'm grateful to Google for making it so easy for me to get this underway.

The next thing that comes to mind is that I have had the privilege to read some absolutely amazing books over the last year or so related to healing; trauma's effects on health, what causes illness, how emotions play into disease, how we can heal ourselves. I'm just so happy and full of gratitude today that those books exist and that they have found their way to me. I'm looking forward to sharing some of them with you.

These are just a few to pique your curiosity:

• Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself by Lissa Rankin, MD
• When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress by Gabor Maté, MD
• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk, MD

I'm also really grateful that I know how to read. I don't even give it a second thought most of the time but I can't imagine what my life would have been like, would BE like if I couldn't read. I consider myself one of the truly lucky ones for that gift.

My mother was key in sparking and supporting my interest in books and my first grade teacher at Marie V. Duffy in Wharton, NJ was the one who taught me how to do it. I remember I couldn't stop reading billboards once I was able to figure out what they meant. So today I'm sending out gratitude to both my mother and Mrs. I-can't-remember-her-name as well.

I like to make a list of about 3 to 5 things when I do a gratitude journal entry, not too many that it will take too much time -if it takes more than 5 minutes, I probably won't do it at all- and not too few that I won't have to sit and think about my day for a little while.

What's in your gratitude journal entry today?