Little Wing

Water Wonderland

Last weekend, Mike and I had a grand adventure.

On Saturday. we brought our “new” (42 year old) sailboat home from White Hall.
Her name is Little Wing. 🦋

We had flat water for the 70-mile journey, and the new engine performed like a champ.

We live in SUCH a beautiful place. My favorite way to experience it?
Getting out on the water.
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I’m so excited for this summer of sailing. ​

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“The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am,
and have, is given to me as a gift of love. A gift to be celebrated with joy.”
~ Henri Nouwen

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Growing Our Gratitude
Broadening the Scope

Hi friends!

Any day on the water feels special to me, but this particular journey was remarkable. In so many ways.

Sailing has been part of my relationship with Mike from the very beginning. In fact, he proposed to me on a VERY cold day in May on the Big Lake in Elusive . . . the sailboat he co-owned at the time.

Now that I understand all that’s involved in sailing? I honestly have no idea how he managed to get out a ring, propose, pop open a beautiful bottle of wine, etc. all while sailing in Lake Michigan. At that point, I was of NO help in terms of the boat. He managed to do it all, and I simply got to say, “Yes!” 🥰

Fast forward nearly 24 years to the day.
Mike and I continue to love one another, and we love being on the water together.

Everything that happened last Saturday fills me with so much gratitude and joy. The beauty, the connection with nature, the celebration with family and friends when we arrived at our slip . . . it’s all so restorative and expansive. And, I know I am SO fortunate to have that day.

Special thanks to those who helped make this day possible.
You know who you are, and you are loved.

Gratitude is a word that gets used a lot. Maybe overused?
When any word is used so often, in so many contexts, I feel like it loses some of its potency.  

The quote above is challenging for me. I love the expression of gratitude as a discipline. In other words, it is something that must be tended to, and practiced, in order to change our lives. Some people avoid the word discipline because it may have a negative, punishing, connotation. Not for me. I think of it as steadfastness. Showing up.

While I wish it were as easy as wearing a t-shirt that says GRATEFUL on it . . .  if that’s the only thing we do for our gratitude practice? We probably aren’t going to create much of a personal shift.

And, if we think being grateful means being happy all the time?
I think we’re really missing the mark.

Kristin Lin offers us a more complete perspective:

“A practice of gratitude is not about dismissing sadness, anger, fear, or confusion. Rather, it offers us the opportunity to see that we often experience multiple feelings at once; to welcome joy into the same places where we hold grief; to turn our attention to what is quietly growing and breathing day by day, which, to our possible surprise, includes ourselves.”

Yes! I love this.

Permission to feel all the feelings. In fact, not just permission, but a big, full, "Welcome to the party!"

When I become more attuned with my body and being then everything seems to soften and flow more freely. Awareness, growth, and evolution are happening one breath at a time. This is yoga in action and in motion.

Let’s take a nice big inhale.

And an exhale.

There.
That’s better.
Thank you body.

♥️,
~ m 🦋