TToT: Happy Seventh Birthday – Transplant/10ThingsofThankful anniversaries #Annedemic #Janndemic #AntiRacism #StrawberryMoon #10Thankful

“Go home and stay home.”

—Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada

In mid March our PM told us this and I’ve been interested to see how things happened since then. This has been the last few months and we’re just now starting to gradually, very gradually open things back up a bit, and we shall see what happens over the summer ahead.

Long before all of this coronavirus talk, for me, it’s been five years of
Ten Things of Thankful #10Thankful
and I’ve found great value in this exercise in gratitude along with several other bloggers every week, especially now.

Current host says: Friendships were formed, and a community was born.

This is true. Thanks,
Thankful Me,
and thank you to Lizzi and Josie, those who have kept it going ever since, when one person needed to pass the torch and someone stepped right up to take the TToT on to keep it going for us all for all these years.

After I discovered the TToT, I was lead to another and there’s a partnership between the two weekly blog hops, at the moment for this thankful birthday celebration.

Finish the Sentence Friday with Finding Ninee

I’m thankful for this extended blogging community. I’ve done better in life with a place to go to remember gratitude in the tougher times and in the joyful, celebratory or reflective weeks.

From
Annedemic
to Janndemic, Jann Arden is one of my favourite Canadian musicians and she’s been going on daily walks with her little pup and taking her fans along on Facebook live. She is wise and talented and she has a calm voice of reason and comfort during corona, all the way out there in Alberta where she lives.

I call these walks Janndemic jaunts.

I’m thankful for our, let’s just say, more stable and practical leadership and direction during the first few months of the coronavirus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjhF1GI9n8A

The longest pause on record, it felt like, but what should he have answered?

As a certain #45 is nearing the end of his first four years, I hope he will be gone but I’m just trying to make it to November so we can see him go. I need to focus on what I’m grateful for because all that’s scaring me can feel massive and distracting.

Black lives matter.

Canada is muddling through the coronavirus like any other nation and we have racism here and discrimination—and discrimination with incidents involving cops and African or Indigenous Canadians. We aren’t as bold and in-your-face as all that goes on in the US, but we are hopefully seeing where we need to shape up and I look for signs of change. This appears to be a global movement, along with all the others, global warming and pandemic and economic etc.

Privilege. Apathy. These are just two ways I’ve benefited or faltered with our society’s white supremacy. I’ve done advocacy work with disability long enough to know I have nowhere near all the answers, I will make mistakes and frequently do, but I won’t stop trying to do better because we’re all interconnected, but must remember we don’t know another’s pain or experience in their own body.

I’m thankful I have people that I look to, learn from, and wish for their success and ability to be seen and heard. I want things different, for my nieces and nephews, for their future but also for the present they are growing up through, for every disabled child being born now, every Black child throughout the world, and every black, disabled person.

I write about these days we’re living through and also to document this year, here on my blog. I know, the perfect storm, but pandemic or no pandemic, these demonstrations are bringing people out, speaking of antiracism so nobody will be able to look away anymore.

I’m thankful for the daily diary I’ve started where I write to my grandma (gone 15 years next month) and share with her about this historic time she didn’t live to see. I have a place where I can go to express my biggest fears and anxieties of this pandemic.

I’m thankful for a few writing wins to focus on while the world is on fire.

From Feeling Stupid to Feeling Included – Folks

I wrote this about my journey to finding a safe space to explore movement, through yoga and then Pilates.

I’ve also got an essay about reading and braille that is likely coming out this summer sometime.

I’m thankful for the old rerun episodes of Young and the Restless, airing while new show taping is taking a pause. This is a different year from the almost fifty years of this particular soap opera they play and usually have a theme for one week’s shows, like greatest romances or villains. I can go from an episode I remember watching, at a younger age in life, or I can see an old enough episode that I was barely born when it first aired. It’s taking me back, distracting me once a day for an hour, and it reminds me of my oma who watched for years. She’s been gone ten years next week and I wonder what she’d make of this virus, after she faced war and moving to Canada and all.

I’m thankful for some of the shifts this virus seems to have ushered in, even though much about this time is hard, along with those brought on by systemic racism and prejudice, though these injustices are unacceptable and I am cheering on the protests and this time where a bunch of the best of 20th century are making an appearance in a bundle of fun: 1918 pandemic, 1930s economic woes, and the unrest of the 1960s in the Civil Rights movements to follow. (Sarcasm here, but it all feels like that.)

I’m thankful for the virtual Crip Camp I’m attending this summer, every Sunday, where presenters speak about internalized ableism and activism and mentorship in the disability community. I know I’m not alone in feeling helpless, but I must move beyond that if I want to get anywhere.

I’m thankful for tonight’s strawberry super moon taking place on my kidney transplant anniversary: twenty-three years and counting.

I’m thankful for my kidney, after a few scares with my creatinine and then my potassium level since the start of the year. Things are stable again, for the moment, and I’m thankful for the dedicated specialists monitoring things, always there, and the continuation with phone clinic visits.

I’m thankful I’ve been able to get through such a stressful time and that I practice the attitude of going with the flow (while lying low), even on my worst days of fear and weariness.

Happy 5th Birthday TToT!