Dear Kula Diaries,
A few weeks ago, I shared the list of 6 tiny things that I started doing every single day to change my life. To refresh your memory…
Last week, I took a deep dive into meditation… and this week, we are going to plunge headfirst into gratitude.
Ok, random sidenote: Do you want to hear something that I found amusing? Last week, I was reading a ‘how to’ post for Substack writers… and one column recommended that if you are going to write on Substack that you should, ‘keep it under 1,000 words’. HA! I think I laughed out loud… as my eye caught the little phrase underneath the voiceover for my last post…. “27 minute listen’. Yah, I'm pretty sure that the 1,000 word limit and me are not quite a ‘thing’. And you know what? That’s OK - because I’ve noticed that the second I try to change how I behave in order to ‘get more followers’ or ‘do what I’m supposed to do’ … I lose the genuine authenticity of my voice. So, this is a semi-unrelated side note… but: take advice (including mine) with a grain of salt. The moral of the story is: always listen to your heart and do what feels best to you. The people who want to hear what you have to say or who want to support you are going to show up, regardless of your word count. Just be you.
With that little smidgen of encouragement… let’s get grateful. And I mean really grateful. The first time I heard the word gratitude, I think that I probably scrunched up my face in an embarrassing show of misunderstanding. I thought gratitude was a ‘buzz word.’ My first recollection of the word gratitude was after I got home from my trip to Bhutan in 2011. I had the incredible opportunity to go on a trek in the Himalayas for 21 days and when I returned back to ‘real life’ as a park ranger in WA state, I was notified of my pending layoff on my first day back to work. Not only that, but I was in the midst of trying to navigate a divorce… it was not a pretty time for me. I had felt so much joy and lightness and freedom while hiking through the hills in Bhutan and I was convinced that if I could only get back there… I’d be happy again.
Well, I couldn’t get back to Bhutan (I tried… long story)… so I bought every book I could find about Bhutan instead. In one of the books, the author describes how a gratitude practice changed her life. She started writing down 3 things every single day to be grateful for, and suddenly she experienced magic and everything seemed to get better. I was in a pretty low place at that time, and I had nothing to lose, so I thought I’d give it a try too. I’m going to attempt to replicate my gratitude journal now… so humor me. The first week looked something like this:
So, other than the obvious fact that I love coffee (this is my current fav coffee)… I’ll add that on Day 5, I quit writing in the journal. “This is dumb”, I said, as I tossed the book off my nightstand. I felt disappointed and duped: where were all the miracles that this lady was talking about? Where were all of the good things that were supposed to happen to me? Why did the same stuff just keep happening to me over and over again?
I couldn’t figure it out. And, unfortunately for me, I didn’t figure it out for another few years. Because, as Eckhart Tolle says (with a smirk), “You needed to suffer more.” Cruel? Not really. True? Absolutely. The first time that gratitude appeared for me during my dark night of the soul - I did not know what it meant, nor was I willing or open to experience it and let it into my life. After my near death experience, however, everything changed. I’ve mentioned it before - but a few weeks after that incident, I did a meditation where I placed my hand on my heart and felt the aliveness within my body. I became aware that I was alive… that my heart was beating… that my lungs were breathing… and that my life in this cosmos was a gift. The gratitude didn’t come from a cup of coffee or a piece of peanut butter toast… or any material thing. The gratitude came from the love within me and around me - the love that is woven together to create every part of the universe.
Gratitude is a feeling - not a list.
And so, when I sat down to write this post… I wondered to myself: How can I give my readers the feeling of gratitude? How can I hold it in the palm of my hand and extend it to you and let you press it into your heart - even just for a moment? I was pretty stumped about how to do this… until a little miracle arrived to me in the form of a small cardboard box full of mementos that my grandmother had saved from my childhood. In the box? Some essays that I had written in my early 20s.
Right out of college, I moved in with my best friend’s parents because my family had moved to Maryland. I had decided to take a year off between college and medical school (which I was planning to attend)… and I decided that I’d try to work and make some money in the meantime. My days were spent surfing ‘Monster.Com’ for jobs… attempting to start small businesses (which I always gave up on)… and ultimately, I landed a job working as a cart girl at a Hot Dog Cart at a golf course. I’m infinitely sad that smart phones didn’t exist in the early 2000s, because I would give my left pinky for a photograph of me working at that hot dog cart.
After my stint at the Hot Dog Cart, I ended up finally getting a job working for a marketing and printing company. I initially loved working at this job… particularly working with the customers. I loved working with entrepreneurs who were designing their logos - it felt so exciting and exhilarating to be a part of that process. We had one customer named Howard who was a retired professor - and since he came to the shop all the time to make copies, we became friends. On one occasion, I told him that I loved to write and, for fun, I asked him to ‘assign’ me some writing homework. Very quickly, these weekly ‘assignments from Howard’ became a regular occurrence and each week, he’d give me a prompt and a new topic to write about.
I share this story… because, quite honestly, I had forgotten about it… until I opened the box from my grandmother, who was one of those kind humans who saved everything that her grandchildren ever sent her. Inside that box was a copy of every essay that I had ever written for Howard - and apparently, also sent a subsequent copy to my grandparents to read.
I wanted to help you all feel gratitude - and this week, gratitude was delivered to me in a cardboard box. As I read my simple essays from almost 2 decades ago - I was struck by the softness of my heart and the ability that I had to see the good in the things that mattered - my seemingly unwavering ability to feel grateful for exactly where I was and to find the good in everything. Somewhere along the line… I’m not sure how it happened… but my gratitude seeped out: replaced by an exhausting search for ‘other things’ that would make me happy. Bitterness crept in, and I spent a long time looking at the world around me and only seeing the things that were ‘wrong’. It took me almost two decades to look back within myself and realize that I have everything that I need at this moment, right now. I am whole. I am complete. Nothing, in this moment, is lacking.
I’m going to share an abbreviated version of one of those essays with you now - in the hopes that it will help you also find a sense of gratitude in your own heart. This essay was dated August 24, 2004 and it is entitled, “Fantasy Meal’. The prompt from Howard was for me to write an essay about my ‘Fantasy Meal’ - where it would be, who would be there, etc…. Ok… here goes nothing:
The Beehive trail in Acadia National Park is one of the most spectacular hiking trails in Maine. While most trails are rated on difficulty levels such as “easy”, “moderate”, and “strenuous”, the Beehive is a unique breed in a category by itself - it is listed as a “ladders” trail. To earn the reward of one of the most spectacular views in Acadia, you must shimmy along 2ft wide ledges and climb up sheer cliffs with iron rungs hammered into the rock. My fantasy meal would occur at the top of the Beehive, overlooking Sand Beach and the Atlantic Ocean.
The first time I climbed the Beehive, I was 13 years old. I still remember the look on my parents’ faces when they saw my little sister trying to stretch her tiny body to reach the ladders which were too far apart for her. I can still hear my mother’s voice ringing in my ears - “BE CARE- OH MY GOSH - BE CAREFUL SLOW DOWN!!!” My dad flanked our expeditious family from behind, seemingly calm, but with facial expressions dotted by looks of sheer panic. As we crested the final vertical climb, I vividly remember the feeling of achievement as the gusty wind took my hair and tossed it around wildly. I read a book once about climbing Mount Everest, and it destroyed my fantasy of the feeling that I thought climbers had when they reached the summit. The climber said he was so numb, tired and in pain when he reached the top of Mount Everest, that he just wanted to go back down - he didn’t even have the mental capacity to care about what he had accomplished. As I stood on top of the Beehive for the first time, the sweltering heat beating down on my face, I was thankful that I could feel my achievement in every aching muscle of my body.
Dinner at the Beehive would be enjoyed by over 30 people. While my sisters and parents would be the guests of honor, I would invite all my close relatives and friends for a huge family/friends reunion. My grandparents and all guests not able to make the treacherous hike, would be flown to the top of the Beehive via helicopter.
Besides the people, the best part of any meal is the food - and food is best when it brings back a good memory. The meal would start out with fresh lemonade - like the kind I sold on the sidewalk as a child. The main course would be a choice of jumbo lump crab cake with sun-dried tomato pasta and cream sauce (the first meal I ever cooked), or spaghetti with my mom’s homemade sauce. Acorn squash with brown sugar and cinnamon would be a side dish - the first time I ever made this, I forgot to turn the squash upside down on the cookie sheet, and they dried up and burnt to a crisp. My disappointment was colossal as, my mouth watering, I opened the oven to a smoky, charred squash and had to resort to eating cereal for dinner. For dessert - vanilla ice cream with fresh cooked berries in raspberry sauce. The entire meal would be followed by hot tea or espresso imported from the hotels in Greece. When my family and I went to Greece a few years ago, I would order a cup of hot tea, and my dad would order tiny cups of espresso every night, and I loved the feeling of watching him truly relax as he looked around the Grecian landscape.
Thinking about my fantasy meal makes me realize what is important to me. Each place that I have been in my life, each meal that I have eaten, is made more special by the people that I share it with. The Beehive would not be The Beehive without my family struggling behind me to reach the top. Each bite of food tastes sweeter when it brings back a memory of a point in my life when I was truly happy and surrounded by people that I love. While my fantasy meal only exists in my mind, I know how fortunate I am to have the memories and the family and friends to create such an event. How empty my life would seem if my fantasy meal consisted of celebrity guests and a famous caterer! Sometimes the imagination is more powerful than one might think - if I close my eyes and concentrate hard enough, I can really feel the Maine breeze… hear the laughter of my friends and family… and taste the sweetness of lemonade and berries.
Gratitude doesn’t mean that you don’t want to create something else - in fact, quite the opposite. Gratitude is the way that you create the things that you want to create in your life. Somebody once asked me, “How did you get Kula Cloth to grow so quickly”, and my response was simple, “Because I didn’t need it to grow quickly.” When you need something to be different than it is in order to be grateful or happy - you unintentionally push that thing away. But, if you can find the feeling of wholeness and gratitude right now, exactly where you are… you begin to match the energy of all of the things that you want to create.
The new job… the money… the adventurous lifestyle… the clarity… the idea… the joy… the fun… the sense of peace and fulfillment…. those things match the feeling of gratitude! So, when you can find the feeling of gratitude now - you’re laying out the welcome mat for your new creations and saying: I’m whole right now in my beingness. There is nothing that can be added to me. And then, guess what happens? The faucet opens… and things begin to flow not because you are trying hard… but because you no longer need them in order to find that feeling of love - because it already exists within you, and you know it on a level so deep that it radiates from your heart in a billion different directions.
It’s not always easy - I know. I don’t wake up every single day and feel grateful - I don’t want to give the wrong impression that I’m floating on a cloud over here - because I’m not. Being a business owner isn’t easy a lot of times… I get overwhelmed and stressed and frustrated… but gratitude is my foundation and I come back to it again and again, because it is the fuel behind everything I do. Every time I generate this strong, powerful energy - I can feel it in my bones and things start to happen without me ‘doing’ anything at all - because the whole cosmos is shifting in response to my energy. Remember - you’re a satellite beacon saying, “SHOW ME MORE OF THIS” … and when you radiate gratitude… guess what comes back to you? More gratitude.
When I was in a very low place and I heard people talking about gratitude - it would genuinely annoy the sh*t out of me. “Well of course they are grateful… they have the perfect life!!! MUST BE NICE!” I was waiting for the things to change in my life to find gratitude. You might look at your life right now and feel the same thing - maybe it’s hard to feel gratitude if you are experiencing despair. If that’s the case: start small. Don’t try to lie to yourself and pretend you are grateful for your job if you aren’t. Start with your hand on your heart. Start by feeling your lungs breathe. Think about a good memory. As you plant these small seeds - they will grow.
A voice from the past?
This week was, honestly, a really tough one for me - and I was a little bit nervous that it was a mistake to write about gratitude during a stressful week where I felt like I had let my own thoughts get the best of me. I couldn’t have been more wrong. It is exactly when we think we can’t be grateful that we need to dig deep and remember what matters. It is in getting out of the stories in our minds - and back into our hearts that we can connect to what’s true. Gratitude isn’t something that we can push off, ‘until things get better’… the feeling of gratitude is the thing that invites the solutions to arrive.
As I read my essays this week and decided to share one of them with all of you … a strange thought occurred to me. I hadn’t thought about those essays in decades… and I had forgotten that they even existed. And yet… they arrived at the perfect moment… ‘coincidentally' during a week when I really needed to hear that voice. Twenty-three year old me couldn’t possibly have imagined that 2 decades later, a long-forgotten paper copy of an essay I wrote would ever make it back to me on a specific week when I intended to write about gratitude… and wasn’t really feeling it. No digital copies exist - so the unlikeness of their existence in our computerized age was only superseded by the love of my grandmother. And yet - I’ve also heard it said that past, present and future are happening at the same time. Deep inside my heart, a part of me wonders if twenty-three year old Anastasia wasn’t really writing the essays for Howard… maybe, I was writing them for me… and for you.
Thank you all so much for being here, friends. My gratitude for you knows no bounds. It is a joy to share, to write and to create ripples of good with all of you. If you feel inclined, I would encourage all of you this week to take the time to feel the feeling of gratitude in your heart, in a way that feels good for you. Or, take a few minutes out of your day to write out your Fantasy Meal, if that sounds like a fun exercise. If none of those things sounds good - or if you are having a difficult time summoning the feeling of gratitude - I want you to know that’s OK too. There is nothing you are doing wrong - and nothing you need to try to force yourself to do. Simply being who you are, exactly how you are right now, is always enough.
As always - please feel free to reach out to me anytime at anastasia@kulacloth.com … or if you want to submit a question for my weekly AMA with AMA post (which will appear on Wednesday !), you can submit it anonymously using this form.
I am wishing all of you infinite ease, peace and wellness - today and everyday. I’m including one of my poems below called, ‘Just Once’. I hope it reminds you that you are enough.
Love,
Anastasia
P.S. The word count for this post is approximately 3557. I hope you loved them.
Just Once
She wanted to hear it
Just once
And it never came
I’m doing something wrong
She thought
So I’ll change this
Or that
And maybe then, I’ll hear it
Those words
Harder and harder she worked
Trying everything
Thinking that just this next thing would be the thing that made it happen
Until one day she looked at herself
And didn’t even know who she was
A wreckage of a flower that had once bloomed brightly
Once-bright eyes, now dim like dusk
A crumbled remnant of a dream
That once had been
And as painstaking as it had been to build this shell,
To construct this façade of who she should be
She was surprised to find how easily it slipped off her skin
As tears slid down her cheeks
Liquid mirrors of her heart
She started to see
The reflection of who she truly was
She finally heard the words
At first she thought it was just a breeze
Then a whisper
And as if the whole earth
Sighed
I’m proud of you
I love you
You are enough
You have always been enough
And she was surprised to discover
It was her own voice
That spoke them
Thank you! Makes sense to me, I’m going to try it.
Grandma use to go through her box of stuff from you when I would visit. She remembered receiving your letters always like it had just happened. It brought her a tremendous amount of joy and gratitude for having such a loving granddaughter. In turn, I am grateful that you shared your love with her and grandpa. Your discussion on gratefulness is wonderful.❤️