Dear Sugar,

It has been quite a turn of events, a positive twist of fate, if you will, that today, I can close my eyes, listen to my breath, hear my heart beat, and a smile can spring forth from deep down to know that no matter what happens the world will continue to unfold eternally, in all its magnificence, with or without me when such thought of the universe’s seeming indifference for our individual livelihood would plummet me further into the abyss, what had been a long time “companion.”

I am grateful for learning to see and appreciate more and more the light possible from darkness and, then, how brightly and gloriously it shines. We all have our own demons in one form or another–be they “should mantras” or traumatic incidences, little nagging ones or big haunting ones, whether self-imposed or conditioned and implanted in us when we were growing up–that scold us, berate us, put us down saying we are not good enough this way, that way, and all the ways in between. Or worst: we are not good and, in fact, very bad, cheaply made, unworthy of anyone’s time and attention. Growing up, I listened closely to my demons, big and small, feeding them with my heed and an obstinate obedience that no matter what others said otherwise of my capabilities and character, I could not believe to be true though I believe they mean it.

I am grateful for learning to see myself with a more sympathetic eye, learning that if we can learn to feed ourselves kindness and love, our demons will starve and, then, a peace is possible within that will naturally heal and open our hearts, allowing us to feel deeply and even begin to see how expansive and, I suspect, boundless the heart can be–how loving and pure it is for all things.

For these and the humbleness one finds in gratitude–I am grateful.

Love,
Humbled

 ***

Sassy Queenpin Mama

Dear Sugar,

I am grateful for the warmth of my grandmother’s scarves, yarn passed through wise fingers and weathered needles; the warmth of family that has taught me to feel the warmth of true friendship. To let your fingertips brush away my curls so your lips can meet my eyelids. To trust your path—and follow mine.

Thank you, dearest Sugar.

Erica

 ***

Dear Sugar,

I am so grateful I got laid off from my job two years ago. I was working in Communications, writing press releases, newsletters, fliers, website copy. Any creative language that I used was circled in red. “Too wordy,” “what does this mean?” I’d drive home from the office, exhausted, and attempt to sit in front of the computer again, after 8 hours of the same, and just feel numb, unable to conjure any inspiration. It was with a shock that I realized how time sped by and years accrued there, the same annual company events rolling around at an alarming pace. It was as though observing myself from the outside that I witnessed that I had somehow taken the wrong turn and was plodding along a road that diverged further and further from the one my friends had embarked on after we got our BA’s in Creative Writing. They were now teaching at universities, and some were wildly successful, with bestselling books out. I smiled at their readings and felt embarrassed by the way I pretended that their personal inscriptions to me in their novels meant I was still part of the writing community. And I was jealous. But I couldn’t imagine how I would support myself if I quit my job to write. I was alone at 36, with no savings, living in an apartment in the San Francisco Bay Area that had a hefty rent, and I felt that proverbial ship had sailed. I was too old to start over now.

So when I got a call from our director one afternoon as I sat at my desk composing a press release, and I went into his office, where my boss also sat, and they told me that the recession had forced them to eliminate a number of positions including mine, I was initially knocked off my feet and devastated. I started bawling in front of them. I cried as I packed up my little plant and stole office supplies, packing the contents of my desk into the clichéd cardboard box. Cried on my couch, where it felt strange to be sitting at noon on a weekday. I immediately started sending out my resume to PR and Marketing firms.

But then I started to think. If ever there was a chance for me to start over and do what I loved, this was it. And I was old, but thanks to being dumped by my boyfriend, I had no attachments to anything anymore. I literally had nothing left. It was a huge lesson in the power of perspective when I realized that it was my choice to see these circumstances as a loss, that I could also say I literally had nothing standing in my way. So I made a drastic move. I moved out of my house, put all my stuff in storage, and went to my parents’ house, and I put together ten applications to MFA programs all around the country. I then signed up as a volunteer at an autism treatment facility that housed me for the 6 months I waited for an answer. The range of emotions and the validation I felt when I started getting the phone calls accepting me was overwhelming.

I am now in my second year of the MFA program in Nonfiction at The University of Iowa, and every day I am so grateful that I lost my job in California. I love it. I get to geek out over writing with some incredible minds. I get to write my mind, not in service to a company’s vision, but to mine. I discovered a love of teaching. I’m starting to publish. I feel like I’ve found my way back into a community that, looking back, I didn’t have the confidence to believe I could really be a part of. Had I not been laid off, I never would have attempted it. Having nothing left meant I no longer had any excuses. What a gift.

M

 ***

Dear Sugar

Remission.

X

 ***

***

Dear Sugar,

I’m thankful I have a child who teaches me how to behave. When Katie was four I gave her a timeout after still another power struggle over bedtime. She was upset, but resigned herself to a corner for the four minutes. Forgetting it was dark in her room, I pulled the door almost closed. She cried, and said she was scared. “Be scared,” I suggested, obviously in need of a timeout myself.

This was tough on both of us. When the four minutes were up we hugged–and talked. Since I’d snapped at her, we decided I should get a timeout, too. Her eyes lit up, a little order restored to her kid universe.

“Four minutes!” she announced, with great relish. I congratulated myself on the creative parenting while she paused at the door. Her eyes were wet. “I won’t close it,” she said. “I don’t want you to be scared.”

 I spent my time in the corner crying, too. It’s been twelve years–Katie’s sixteen now–and I still wince when I think of it. Thankfully I do that often, one reason I look back on her childhood with so few regrets.

 Maureen Anderson

 ***

Loring

***

Dear Sugar,

I am grateful for having such an amazing dad, who unlike many other countless parents,

is actually trying to understand and accept my gay way of life and although my mother and I haven’t had the best mother/ daughter relationship, I have faith that she too will see that I’m not living a sin.

I am grateful for my friends, who are courageous and honest and loyal. I don’t think I could’ve wished for better ones. I am grateful for Her. She is the most beautiful thing that has ever happened to me and it just blows my mind that, incredibly, she feels the same way about me

I’m so thankful for art. For music. For going against the crowd. For inspiration.

For true emotion. For literature. For food. For simple things. For joy. For laughter. For happily ever afters. For love. For life.

 Yenni

 ***

Dear Sugar,

For months, I’ve been writing and emailing gratitude lists with women in my yoga teacher training. Every day, we send them to one another. I read their gratitude lists, they read mine. Oftentimes we are grateful for the people in our life. Sometimes we are grateful for things concrete, like salt and vinegar chips, coffee or a mattress. Other times, we’re grateful for the abstract–hope, humility or patience.

Yogi Bhajan, who brought Kundalini Yoga to the United States, once said, “Gratitude is the open door to abundance.” I find this to be true. Once I started writing daily gratitude list and feeling more and more grateful, I saw how much I had. The abundance in my life was always there, gratitude allowed me to see it with clarity. In viewing my life with a sense of gratitude, I felt fortunate; I felt a sense of joy.

On good days, I write gratitude lists with ease. During bad days, I feel a sense of resistance. I find myself only focusing on my challenges or struggles. In other words, I just shake my head and think: But I hate everything about my life. It is on these days when writing a gratitude list, when cultivating a sense of gratitude appears most important. Gratitude brings light to darkness. Gratitude stops the bad day from becoming days from becoming a bad time, a bad season, a bad year. In short: I’m grateful to feel grateful.

Zoé

 ***

Dear Sugar,

The thing I am most grateful for in my life is my children. My two sons and my daughter were born 16 weeks early. My daughter and one of my sons didn’t survive (the survival rate for 24 weekers is about 50%). I am still blessed to be their mom even though I am not with them now and I definitely feel blessed to have shared what little time I did with them.

One of my sons did survive, even though I was told nearly every day for the first couple of weeks that I shouldn’t expect him to make because he’d had a severe pulmonary hemorrhage and badly damaged lungs because of that. Over the course of his 5 months in the NICU, he had nearly every typical preemie complication, plus a whole lot of less typical ones.

He is tough and a fighter–even back in the NICU when he only weighed about 1 lb 5 oz. He was kept in a small flat bed with glass sides and they stretched plastic wrap across the top to help keep him warm. Most of the time at least one of his tiny feet was pushing up on that plastic wrap like he was trying to get it out of his way and that’s been his whole attitude ever since then: nothing holds him back for long.

He is a happy 14-year-old now with a good attitude and an amazing amount of resilience. He just keeps chugging forward and finding something to be enthusiastic and happy about in life, no matter what life throws at him. I truly think that something deep inside him understands that there were many times in the NICU that he almost didn’t make it and he’s determined to make the best of what he’s got. He’s quite definitely a teenage boy! Nonetheless, I am blessed, so blessed, to be his mom and every day I am thankful for him and for the NICU staff who helped make sure he survived.

I’m grateful for all my children, but I’m especially grateful for the one who reminds me every day of the joy and wonder to be found in living.

RJ

 ***

Dear Sugar,

While I’m grateful for trees with gnarly trunks, a night sky resplendent in stars, a call from a loved one, hugs, finding out the cancer is gone and hearing laughter, I’d like to give thanks to an Asian American girl, all of about 7 years old who 22 years ago smiled brightly as she gave me a wave of thanks for allowing her family to cross a busy street. That smile so full of joy, so pure in meaning I’ve not only carried with me all these years, but refer to when I need a bit of a gratitude reminder.

Lisa Rehfuss

 ***

Dear Sugar,

I’m thankful for laughter, the kind that makes your face hurt because it’s so true and full of joy. It’s honest. There’s a special bond I find between two people laughing, something special that stays in that moment making it beautiful and memorable. No matter what sorts of things cloud my day, a good bout of laughter clears everything and makes life good again. Happy Thanksgiving, Sugar.

Allison

 ***

Sugar, taken at the Magnolia Bakery in NYC.

***

Dear Sugar,

When I read your missive, immediately the things that popped into my head were the usual things — I am grateful for my family, my friends, food/shelter, art, the things I’ve been given but don’t necessarily deserve, or even the things I’ve earned but still feel lucky to have, even if luck was only part of it. But then I thought about unfair wars and Occupy Wall Street and Sandusky and all the polarization and hate going around, and it seemed terribly bleak, and suddenly the overarching thing I wanted to say was, I am thankful for goodness.

Then I took issue with that. Because why should I be grateful about something that SHOULD exist? The world should be filled with goodness, and perhaps in an ideal world, we don’t get surprised when good Samaritans or generous people or local heroes warm our hearts with their stories. No, instead, we would shrug and go on, because it would be the norm. Why do we live in a world where it’s so rare that we’re grateful for a glimmer of good?

But maybe that’s the point about gratitude. The best kind of gratitude is the kind that has no basis in entitlement. I did nothing to deserve my amazing mother and so of course I’m grateful for her. I worked really hard to patch up a difficult relationship we once had, which I suppose I DID do something for, and I’m grateful for that too. And I read columns like yours, filled with generous thoughts, and commented upon by more generous open people, and I am glad it seems like there are more good people in the world than there are crummy people. I am glad these people are also the kind of people who are grateful enough for what they’ve been given to want to give back.

Because I believe in karma. Not the kind of self-absorbed karma that focuses only on your own life. But the kind of pay-it-forward karma that says good karma can be spread around, like positive energy that keeps jumping and building momentum. I think gratitude is like that too. That when you’re grateful for the good things, you want to help others have the good things too. So even if life SHOULD be filled with just good stories, in a way, it’s the gratitude that helps keep the good existing.

So what I’m grateful for is the pervasiveness of good and for the existence of gratitude itself. I’m grateful for the fact that there are enough people in the world who feel gratitude for all the things big and small that bless their lives, actively earned or not. I’m grateful that despite how ugly things get in this world, things have never gotten ugly enough to rob humanity of its spirit and its unflagging belief that we have it in us to be better.

Karissa

***

First photograph: Sugar, wearing the necklace that Max Fenton bought for her (even though he doesn’t know who she is).

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