Inspiring Women: Belle Pirri: Gratitude

A post from Kind Over Matter, pointed me to Belle's gratitude list blog, which was then called Good List Daily, succeeded by We Love Gratitude. What a great idea, I thought, and after lurking and posting as a guest for awhile, I joined the site.

The daily practice of a gratitude list, which I strive at, and which is always incomplete for me, teaches me no matter how bad something is in my life, on balance there is so much is that is good. Furthermore, it is the result of what is before me, around me, how much bigger life is than me, what I take for granted, that I cannot control. There it is for me, the question: What are you grateful for today?

Especially gratifying is encountering a supportive cast of similarly grateful people, complementing each other in our gratitude and offering encouragement as our paths change and turn.

And it is amazing to see Belle’s evolution from her doodles to her discoveries about changing her attitude through practice, and ultimately her gratitude upon giving birth to Ava.

I had the good fortune to meet Belle several months ago when she and Marc, her husband, took a vacation trip to my part of the country. It was great to see she was not only the gal in the picture and also very much the person she presents in her writing and artwork, grateful, inquisitive and open-hearted.

Recently, Belle launched Creative Spiritual Women, another site to inspire and encourage her community of friends by sharing her life lessons and discoveries of wonderful things. What stands out for me right now is Belle emphasizing that it is not so much the things that happen to us as the stories we tell ourselves about what happened and what is. Gratitude (or as Belle writes, “radical gratitude”) goes a long way towards reframing these stories. And courage, as Belle writes here: “It’s an act of trust to yourself to tell the truth.”

I cannot be grateful enough for Belle living in the world.