Gratitude Journal - Week 3 - August 26, 2019

This week, I get to focus on gratitude toward family. 

How does one define family? There’s the family you’re born into. The family that you build and share with a life partner. The urban family that you adopt when blood relatives aren’t close by or available. The colleagues at work who you choose to also spend time with outside of the four walls of the company. It could be your spin class buddies or a bunch of plant loving friends. It’s also a loving pet, like my dog, Kona. She is family as well.

I suppose the best way to describe a family is wherever you find a sense of belonging. And nowadays it can even be virtual as technology has made the world a much smaller place.

My immediate family - my mom and dad - live in Vancouver so I am incredibly grateful for that. My brother and his family live in Toronto and while I wish we were physically closer, I know that’s where he is happiest. We keep in touch with calls and texts - and I always look forward to trips to the Six when I can! 

The family I’ve created is a total blessing. My two boys get to shuttle between their Dad’s house and mine - with a 3 minute drive or a 20 min walk. The fact that our households are so close together offer a flexibility with the kids that most divorced couples could only dream of. 

And their grandpa lives with their Dad so they get to spend an incredible amount of quality time with him as well. In fact, to say we’re lucky to have grandparents on both sides living in the same city is an understatement. Being able to experience three generations in one household is something to really treasure. Those stories of struggles and triumphs shared over family recipes and moments of laughter are things I hope will live in my children’s hearts forever. 

This is an opportunity to forge stronger identities, in a way that will help carry these stories forward for generations to come. For we are nothing without our stories or without our families.