Gratitude Journal

If I could make journals, I would make gratitude journals, and I would keep the best one for myself.

My gratitude journal would be five feet, nine inches tall because I work better with a life size canvas. I would use a gold pen to write my gratitudes, so I would make my canvas pecan brown. That particular hue would keep my words from getting lost on a blanch background and turning into white noise. Anyway, those colors are so majestic together. They spark my creativity. I have gratitude for this gratitude journal because it’s sparking me and my creativity.

I would lightly mist my gratitude journal with the warm, masculine scent of Tom Ford cologne so that it becomes my aroma therapist, emitting the smell of a safe spaces.  Safe spaces anoint the air and call me to articulate my mental and emotional confusion in a manner that brings me to rich, intoxicating enlightenment.  Sometimes, as I free myself from stifling insecurities, I see stars, and galaxies, and all that is in me, was before me, and will be after me. As time goes on, my gratitude for this fragrance intensifies bringing forth my consistent evolution toward greatness. I have gratitude for my gratitude journal because its mere essence pulls my feet along the bewildering path of greatness.

My gratitude journal would be smooth on its surface and rough around the edges. The look would call to mind a handsome being donning a fly suit with a dope pair of wheat Timberlands. That look that says, “I am refined, but don’t push me.” (Insert sinister smile here).

Spending time sharing my most sacred thoughts with my gratitude journal would bring about my maturation from a blindly arrogant girl fueled by foolish obstinance, to a confident woman of submission who seeks to serve at the behest of The Most High. My confidence would grow as I share all that has caused me self-doubt with my gratitude journal, every new entry, on every new day causing me to go deeper inside, so that I may understand the other thing that evoked the other thing that I interpreted as hurt, translated into anger and used as a weapon formed against Love so that I would never prosper. My gratitude journal would destroy my old drafting table so that I could no longer be the architect of my own demise.

Now I see that the subtle negative intangibility of hypervigilance was not my savior. It was, in fact, the villain holding me hostage, weighting my head such that when its burden was removed, I could finally wear my crown. My gratitude journal made me a queen.

Gratitude journal, you saved my life and I wish to honor that. With every verbal release of energy I expel, I wish to honor that. With every mental landscape I paint, I wish to honor that. With every swing of my hips that I use to play my feminine melodies, I wish to honor that.

Gratitude for my five nine with brown eyes, personification of the best version of my gratitude journal. My gratitude journal would be my confidence keeping, safe space providing, sojourner of gratitude, and I have gratitude for that.

Claudia Shivers, a Gratitude Practitioner and Gratitude Journalist