Dear Sugar,

I am grateful for my sister. My only sibling. My best friend. I am especially grateful for the strength she has been blessed with.

At nineteen my sister had been to rehab twice. She ran away from home. Sinking in the muddy sickness of addiction, my little sister struggled with a disease my family didn’t understand.

Her disappearance in my life left me with nothing to hold onto. The sister I knew had slipped and fell, and left a mess of our family. But somehow she came back. She came back to sit in the driveway, unable to lift her body out of her beat up van. I entered that van with her. I looked her in the eyes and begged her not to give up. To grow up with me, to be at my wedding, to raise our kids together like we had planned. She could barely move her weak body out of the car. But somehow she did, and the strength it took her to face her heroin addiction has been inspiring.

With this inspiration came work. My parents struggled to understand. They blamed themselves and I blamed myself too. Family is unity; its feeling the pain and helping each other carry on with it. I am grateful that we were able to help her rebuild her sober life.

This week she will be visiting our high school to share her story. I couldn’t be more proud of my sister. I couldn’t be more grateful that she was able to find the strength and faith in herself that we all lose at times. She found her solid ground again. I’m just happy to have her alive and a part of my life.

Sincerely,
A loving sister

***

Dear Sugar,

I am grateful for the wonderful, challenging, intense, fulfilling, infuriating, enlightening, invigorating, exhausting, exciting job I have. I am the Director of the Arts Programs at a Boys and Girls Club, serving hundreds of incredible kids ages 7-18 years old. It is a job that I spent my entire life getting ready to be able to do and do as well as I can. It is a job that I didn’t even know I was dreaming of when I was a kid, yearning for and craving for a place where I could feel safe to be and express myself. Now, I get to create that space for these kids every day.

Yours,
Annie H. Kee

 ***

Dear Sugar,

Given that I am a 53 year old woman and finally out of what I couldn’t even recognize as a closet for many decades, and given that I’ve just gotten an email response from my estranged sister, who has hardly acknowledged me since my confession, and who, today, labeled in an email the love I have for my partner as “unnatural,” I am grateful for the handful of friends who have refused to let who I love alter their perceptions of me. And I am grateful for a new generation of young people who will fight to make sure that our culture puts an end to the deeply embedded hostility and discrimination against people based solely on who they choose to love.

I am not out to my 77-year-old mother yet. But I am grateful for the memory I have of what she once said after admitting that she couldn’t understand lesbians. She sighed and said, ”But look at Ellen; she has to be the happiest woman on the face of the earth.”

Look at this woman, I want to tell her (in the attached photo; I am on the right):  she has to be the happiest woman on the face of the earth!

Bonnie Boaz

***

Dear Sugar,

I am grateful T. died. He was only nineteen and I still don’t understand a world where a nineteen year old, so full of life, dies of a heroin overdose. I am grateful because my little brother lived. I hope all those kids will wake up now, my brother included, but I can see now that there are no guarantees. I can see now that all you can do is your best and not let it destroy you when the ones you love fall. I can see now all the things about myself I never wanted to face; how afraid I am, how I hide from the world, how I try to control what can’t be controlled, how I fool myself.

T’s death gave me the strength to look myself in the face and deal with what I see. It gave me the strength to look at my crumbled, devastated family and deal with what I have: we are one long line of tunnel-visioned, strong, hardworking, alcoholic, drug addicted, in denial and unhappy messes of generations of people.

I want to stop, or at least do my best to alter the repeating pattern. I am grateful for self-awareness and for the knowledge that I will never, ever completely understand other people, the universe or myself and this is not a debilitating thought, it is a beautiful one. More than anything I am grateful for my husband; my genius unconscious tricked me into marrying him when my paranoid brain tried to talk me out of it. Marrying him was the best decision I ever made. I don’t know how I got so lucky.
Thank you.

S

***

Dear Sugar,

I’m grateful for stability—that I own my own home, that I have a salary and health insurance, that I have food in the fridge and can pay my bills (more or less) on time, that I have no massive debt.

I’m grateful that my family got their shit together. We were always one of those inhumanly close, Norman Rockwell families when I was growing up, but after my mom died and my dad started dating, it was touch-and-go there for a while. There was yelling and crying and drinking and a few sort of bullshit family counseling sessions and cold stony silences on long car drives and this scary dark cloud of discord looming over the horizon, threatening to turn us into one of those fractured families that can’t be in the same room together without fighting. It took some time, but the cloud passed us by. There’s no other way to say it but that we all simply got our shit together.

I’m grateful my stepmother recovered from breast cancer. I’m grateful my dad didn’t have to lose another wife he loved. I’m grateful that our family rallied around her the way they rallied around my mom, so she didn’t ever feel alone.

I’m grateful for how many women in my life have stepped up to be backup moms to me since I lost my own.

I’m grateful for amazing relationships. On the first anniversary of the day my mom died, my best friend Bill (we’ve been friends since we were 6) called me right at midnight from Hong Kong to tell me a funny story that began “I’ve discovered the world’s worst smell.” Last Christmas, a friend of mine from work gave me her grandmother’s nativity set, except she gave it to me a piece at a time, sneakily, over 2 weeks with the help of many accomplices, leaving shepherds and wise men all over Portland. I have friends that pray with me, friends that argue politics with me, friends that make me laugh, friends that let me cry, friends that watch and discuss “America’s Next Top Model” without judgment. I am rich in friends.

I’m grateful for the memory of my mother. She died in March of 2008, and sometimes it feels like yesterday and sometimes it feels like centuries ago. But more and more now, I feel her presence in me. When I make a perfect stew, when I say something witty at a cocktail party, when I stand up for myself, when I help somebody who needs help, I can feel her in me doing those things. People always say things like, “I can see your mom in you,” and I used to think it was just something that people say to make you feel better until I suddenly found myself able to feel it happening. It makes her, I don’t know, present, in a completely different way.

I’m grateful for other women who have lost mothers. I’m not grateful that it happened to them, or that it happened to me, but I’m grateful that if it HAD to happen, that we could all find each other to have a safe place to talk about stuff you can’t talk about with people who haven’t been through it.

I’m grateful for “Dear Sugar.”

I’m grateful for creativity.

I’m grateful for joy. I know so many people who are so stuck in their lives that they can’t take joy in anything. They don’t know where they’re going, they can’t let themselves go and be happy. I’m grateful that I can sit on the couch on a rainy night with a cup of tea and Jane Eyre and feel like the world can have nothing better to offer me.

I’m grateful I have so many books.

I’m grateful that fall in Oregon is so staggeringly beautiful.

I’m grateful anytime I get to sit down to a homemade meal at a table surrounded by people I love.

I’m grateful for the charmed, innocent, happy childhood I was blessed to have. I’m grateful my siblings and I didn’t have to carry with us into adulthood the heartbreaking burdens of poverty or abuse or pain or illness or isolation or a lack of trust that adults will protect you. I worked for eight years as a youth minister in my church, and children who have had their trust shattered by adults who should have protected them sometimes makes me so sad I don’t even know how to get out of bed. I’m grateful I did that job and did it well and don’t have to do it anymore.

I’m grateful for the strength to get out of shitty soul-sucking friendships. I’d be grateful for more of it.

I’m grateful – so, so bone-shakingly, collapsingly, huge-sigh-of-relief grateful – for everything that has happened to me in the past year that made me feel like a real writer. I’m grateful for the feeling that the universe was holding onto a vast backstock of writing-related blessings and dumped them all in my lap over the past year. I’m grateful that good things are happening, and that I have a vast community of support that is unhesitatingly and unabashedly full of joy whenever good things happen to me. I’m grateful that my heart is open enough that I feel the same about them. I’m grateful for a lack of jealousy and competition, and a bumper crop of genuine and enthusiastic encouragement.

I’m grateful for good coffee.

I’m grateful for hope.

I’m grateful for faith.

I’m grateful that I turned 30 this year and that the woman I’m becoming is pretty damn awesome.

CW

Jackie Allen-Doucot

 ***

Dear Sugar,

I’m a female computer programmer, and in my particular field of programming, there are about 50-60 men for every one woman. I have never worked with another woman professionally. Sometimes I get upset about the gender balance and prejudice I face. But, I am grateful that I have the opportunity to program in the first place. Had I lived in a slightly different time, or a slightly different location, or been raised by different people, this opportunity would have been denied to me. Despite the inconveniences, I get to do a job I love. Not everyone gets that. So, for my work, I am grateful.

EL

 ***

Dear Sugar,

This year I am grateful for so much, mainly surviving a long hospital stay. But, if I had to pick only one thing (and really, who can?) I would pick my husband. He stepped up to the plate with his best game on while I was in the hospital and the recovery time after. He ran the house, paid the bills, cared for the children, worked full time and still managed to keep his 4.0 average in grad school. He was sure I was going to die at times, and yet never let on to me or the children his fears. His love is overwhelming and I am more and more grateful for him every day.

CA Wohlmut

***

Dear Sugar,

My scars.

They mean I’m still here.

MS

 ***

Dear Sugar,

I am grateful for redemption, for second and third chances, for forgiveness (both for me and from me), for grace and kindness and more fullness in my life than I’d ever imagined I’d have. I am unimaginably lucky.

LF

 ***

Dear Sugar,

I am grateful to come from a family of storytellers. While the re-telling of stories over the years made my sisters roll their eyes, for me, those stories wove a tapestry of love from one generation of our family to the next. They made people come alive who were long dead and gave me a strong sense of identity and belonging, which I treasure. I aim to pass it on.

Happy Thanksgiving and thank you for letting us share.

Chris Bicknell Marden

 ***

Dear Sugar,

I didn’t have to think too hard about what I was grateful for. I spend my days working with children. I go wherever is needed within a middle school. I am what is known as a paraprofessional or a support to the teachers. My children have learning disabilities, behavior problems, traumatic brain injuries or are severally physically disabled and mentally disabled.

Today I was with a boy who summed it up for me. He is wheelchair bound; his body is twisted and unable to move on its own. He is non-verbal. The one thing that this boy seems to love, to really enjoy is music. He sits in a wheelchair with a tape recorder resting behind his head. When the music stops, he will whine until either he knows you are trying or you are able start the music again. Today he was lying on the floor with the physical therapist stretching his body when he was left alone for a few minutes just to relax. As I watched him he moved his hands to the music. His face lit up with a smile as he listened and moved any part of his body that he could. I began to wonder, had God/The Universe dealt this child another hand would he perhaps be a brilliant musician? A composer maybe or just a wonderful average guy who loved music?

I have my own difficulties with my children. My youngest not only has an autoimmune disease but also has severe asthma and is dyslexic. Working with a child like the one I was with today always snaps me back to the reality of what my life could be. Regardless of how hard my life may seem at times, I am ever so grateful that my children are as healthy as they are. They are functioning and able to live a normal life even if normal requires some adjustments, they are only adjustments. I am grateful, forever grateful that God/The Universe didn’t decide to deal me another hand.

Christine

 ***

Dear Sugar,

I am grateful that my life is teaching me lessons the hard way. I am grateful for the ability to hold in my hands the crumbled bits of things I once thought certain, to take a deep breath and know that in the end, all will be well. I am grateful beyond words for every single moment of pain my mind and body have experienced, because that is the price I pay for still being in this delicious world. I am grateful for the dark, lonely nights, mindful that the sun always finds its way back into the sky. I am grateful that life keeps calling to me, awakening me, and delighting me with its extravagance.

Robin Gray-Reed

 ***

Sugar took this shot in the city where she lives.

Dear Sugar,

I’m grateful that my mother taught me to cook. More specifically, I’m grateful for the memories of standing on a chair in the kitchen with her, climbing on the counters to retrieve a spice or a bowl from cabinets I couldn’t reach. Later, we tag-teamed holiday dinners, talking, dancing, and drinking. By teaching me to cook, my mom taught me to be self sufficient and resourceful. She taught me to share what I made. She taught me my grandmother’s recipes, but she also experimented and brought me along as she tried out new dishes. I’m in college now, but I still love cooking with my mom when I go home and making dinner for my friends here at school. I’ll never be a chef, but I’ll always be able to make myself something good to eat. Thanks, Mom.

Emily

 ***

Dear Sugar,

Everything I am grateful for could be described as “free” – and could also be described as Requiring My Whole Self.

I am grateful for deadlines, because they help me express myself.

I am grateful that all of us exist, that creation is continuous.

I am grateful for #Occupy-ing, because it’s complicated and challenging and nourishing, leading all of us towards re-#Inhabit-ing. I am grateful for all the new (old) ways of being human that we are continually rediscovering.

I am grateful for the opportunity to make peace (my way) with both my parents as they prepare to leave their bodies. I know from your column, Sugar, how many people don’t get this opportunity. I am grateful that I have seized it.

I am grateful for masturbation: sex with someone who totally gets me and finds me hot.

I am grateful for my new partner, designed by the Universe to drive me out of my mind (in a good way), an unexpected revelation when I’d happily settled down with myself (sexually). I am grateful that the Universe is calling on all those unusual and disparate skills that I spent years developing that I didn’t think I’d ever use again. Back into the whirlwind! – with gratitude and perhaps, this time, some grace as well.

I am grateful that I am alive and “useful” and able to express both sentiments.

I am grateful for this question, Sugar, and all the questions you’ve asked yourself and us.

Anonymous

 ***

Dear Sugar,

A week ago my mother and stepfather came to visit me in my adopted hometown, hundreds of miles from where they live. It was their first time here in years, and very special, because when my mom got sick a few years ago I honestly never thought she’d be well enough to visit me here again. They were both real tired, yet bursting with pride to see me in my very own place for the first time ever (I bought a house earlier this year).

A day or two after returning home, my mother has suddenly been diagnosed with a brain tumor larger than a golf-ball, and while she’s still thinking it over, she’s leaning toward refusing treatment–because even if they treated it the results probably wouldn’t be that great. She’ll likely be dead within some not very large number of months. We’re all terribly sad, yet when I talk with my parents, they keep coming back to:  “We’re so glad we got to see you in your new home.”

So we truly are deeply grateful. And there you have it, the sour and the sweet, taste of life.

Tree

 ***

Dear Sugar,

I’m grateful for having my heart chipped (not broken) this summer. I’m grateful to have beautiful, open-eared friends with shoulders that hold up my world when I think it’s crumbling. I’m grateful to be humbled every day by my job and how much I don’t know and how much I’m being pushed to learn and all the loving/fighting women I work with every day. I’m grateful for the mountains and the sun and hot yoga and ice cream dates and sisters who know how to make me laugh for twenty minutes straight on the phone.

Elizabeth Walsh

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