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.

My favorite story

This may be my favorite story.

I heard it in January 2010 at a storytelling event held at the Monti in Durham, North Carolina.
Scott Huler, an author of several books, talks about a time when he was "so thoroughly unhappy," "exiled to the state news desk" at the News & Observer. Why was he unhappy? Because journalism, at least what was expected or required of him, moved from telling stories to providing information ("Get statistics and write stories in the passive voice.") Through the experience, closeness with the escaped chimp, and writing the story, he discovers how he needs to change his life. He's just doing his job and doing it, figures out it no longer feeds him. The warmth, the humor, the surprise, the unexpected conclusion, all make it continue to resonate with me. Mixed in are some horrifying aspects, the prospect of an escaped chimp on the loose in Charlotte for a week, the roadside zoo in light of the recent tragedy in Ohio, the chimp biting the cameraman down to the bone, the chimp chain smoking. I forget these shocking details as I feel the storyteller's anger when the newspaper truncates the story which described an amazing day shared by many people. I like his description of how he checks his version of events with what others' experienced, it's a community storytelling, not something he feels possessive about.

What about me? Do I have a cage to break out of, or is it self imposed, like Blake's mind-forg'd manacles? Maybe that's an illusion, as Belle shows us. It's love and service. And gratitude. And doing what's worked before and may work again.

And what about what I call "my story?" An illusion too, maybe, just signifying the parts that I can recall at this moment, forgetting that I'm part of something greater?