Beth Peterson | Author

Gratitude and Gratefulness

I would like to start this day out talking about what gratitude and gratefulness mean to me.  I give gratitude, which means thanks, each day that I am given the opportunity to help another living soul through their hardest times.  I am grateful, which means appreciative, for the chance to come back here and be able to help others.

Every message I receive from each person whom has gained power and understanding from the words in my book, a speaking engagement, a chance meeting, or a private conversation, leaves me feeling blessed.  I am almost unable to accept and acknowledge it as something I did, to help get each of you to where you are today.  You did the hard work.  You opened your own hearts.  You wanted a change in your life.  I may have shared the tools that I  gathered through my own experiences, but in the end you chose to make the change in your own lives.  For that I am grateful, for having been a part of your path to happiness, wellness, and balance.

It is a long road when someone is living in their own capsule of confinement and has no ideas or directions as to how to get out of it.  My life and death experience has given me the bravery needed to put my ideas out there for all to criticize and what I am receiving is anything but that.  It is message after message of sincere gratitude and gratefulness from each person who has been at the very breaking point of their life.  It is indeed a humbling place for me to be standing, for I am only sharing the lessons I have learned as I overcame the obstacles that were standing in front of me.  I am no better than any other person who is walking their path toward a fulfilling life.  I only strive to become stronger and more enlightened than the person I was the day before.  I embrace the challenges that life gives me and I share the outcome of my struggles.  I have found acceptance and understanding for the things that affect my physical and emotional life.  I have not been cured from the things that have pained me.  I have found a way to give thanks for the lessons that have been brought to my life.  I have learned to be appreciative for them, for without them, I would not be able to help in the way I am helping.

I thank each and everyone of you whom have shared your stories with me.  My life has been touched in so many ways by your honest truths and painful struggles.  I am completely grateful that our paths were able to cross through stories of survival and words of encouragement, in a book that most likely would have sat in a closet until after my next passing.  I embrace this life journey to its fullest capacity of challenges and lessons learned.  Hopefully our paths will cross in person, if they haven’t already, as we all walk this road in search of our own peace and passion.