I’m preparing for my podcast interview with my friend, Guadalupe Goler, and in her recently published memoir “Just 4 Kicks,” she has an chapter on Gratitude.
She lists 30 things she’s grateful for.
It’s a list I could almost directly copy, including things like “All the meals I have at La Boca,” and “New Mexico sunsets.”
I love number 29, which is “MYSELF.”
So I’m grateful, first of all, that Guadalupe agreed to appear on the podcast. You’ll want to tune in on July 6 when the recording drops. I know she’s going to have some amazing gems for us about how to grow an incredibly successful retail business by showing gratitude for your customers. I’m one of Goler‘s most faithful customers. A lot of the reason why is (other than my shoe fetish!) because Guadalupe and Paula always make me feel like I’m the most important person coming through the door.
That’s how you gain a loyal following that lasts over thirty years in downtown Santa Fe!
I’m also grateful for these five things today:
- Right here, right now, this blog where I get to be completely transparent and share my thought with all of you. This is a gift every day. Thanks for checking in.
- My daughter, Johanna, who helped me get well when I had stage IV cancer and who shows up every day as my production assistant, editor, podcast brainiac, content creator, and the mom of the sweetest ten month-old on the planet.
- New Mexico sunsets (just like Guadalupe, I love where I live)
- The folks who are reading my book and sending me notes about how it’s changing their outlook and their lives. I was so afraid to put it out there for public consumption, but it seems to be having a positive impact in my tiny little world.
- My vegetable garden, where the tomatoes are starting to ripen and the artichokes are growing their spiny leaves. This is the place I go at the end of the day when I’m feeling frustrated with something, or I need a moment to regroup. If you read my earlier blog post on Why I’m Planting Radishes, you already know that I find my peace when my hands are in the dirt, taking me back to the farm where I grew up.
I want to take a minute with number 4. If you are creative (and I think we all are), you owe it to yourself and the world to start sharing your story, whether it’s with a painting, a drawing, a quilt, a piece of pottery, or a book. Beauty and truth sustain the world, and I know you have both of those within you.
In The Practice, Seth Godin reminds us that:
Our culture is like that village. Ideas shared are ideas that spread, and ideas that spread change the world.
Creativity is a choice. It is not a bolt of lightning from somewhere.
Of course you’re allowed to sound like you. Everyone else is taken.
What are the five things you’re grateful for today? Be specific. Include yourself if you haven’t already. You’re a gift to the world!
Thanks for checking in.
(By the way, the New Mexico sunset photo was taken by my Logan friend, Bucky Stone.)
Bunny Terry is a native New Mexican who grew up on a farm in northeastern New Mexico. Her first writing job was typing stories on index cards on her family’s Underwood, stories that were uncannily like the ones she read over and over in O Ye’ Jigs and Julips, her favorite childhood book. No one thought to save those index cards for posterity, although there is the theory sarcastically circulated by her siblings that they will certainly be worth millions someday. 