Az első hálaadás - Endoblog.hu - Az endometriózis honlap

This is my first Thanksgiving.

In Europe, where I come from, there is no tradition of this, and quite frankly, I had no idea how to approach it. After a year like that, well, writing a wedding list seemed positively impossible. In fact, it seemed cruel at first.

It takes courage to sit down after a year like this and face my losses. I had to force myself. When I first tried to write about gratitude, all I got were sharp, sarcastic, wounded sentences. But I kept writing. I kept pulling the words out, one stubborn, reluctant sentence after another. Then, somewhere between the third and fourth lines, the wall I'd been leaning against gave way for a moment-just enough to let in a glimmer of light. I stopped. I took a deep breath.

What started as anger and resistance has slowly been tamed and transformed. Behold, this is what I found beneath the rubble, beneath the burnt beams of my shattered life. This is what I want to share with you now.

I am grateful to have survived the unsurvivable. Now I know it's true: we can fight to our last breath, make choices, and shape our lives - and ultimately our world - into a better place to live in, over and over again.

I am deeply grateful to have known Ellise, my puppy, and that I lived through this year with him, which was the hardest year of my life. He loved me - as only an animal can love: purely, unconditionally, with total devotion. Through him I learned what it feels like to be in perfect, effortless harmony with another being. I knew in my bones that such a relationship was real, not a fairy tale.

I'm thankful for Rusty, that little American lamb, who flew into my life for a month - and thanks to whom the Soulbird, a book that somehow managed to pass on to others a power that I desperately needed myself.

I am grateful to have contributed five scientific articles to the profession this year, and that my research is slowly finding its place: towards a more humane, compassionate health service.

I am grateful that my book, The Optimist, has been published, in Hungarian, and I love that the cover has Ellise on it - an everlasting memory of our little threesome with Eliot.

I am grateful for my friends, both here and there, for those who always remember me, and for those who have opened their lives and hearts to me here in New York.

I am grateful for all the colours and all the moods I have seen New York in this year. Now I know all its seasonal faces.

I'm grateful that this year has cleared the air for the people around me - and that everyone who didn't have real love, or wasn't strong enough to watch me go through the fire, was simply out of my life. I have a smaller circle now - but never one so precious.

I am grateful for the person I have become this year - that I was tamed where I was too hard and strengthened where I was broken. I am grateful that I have learned to live and grow alone in impossible circumstances, 8,000 kilometres from everyone who ever loved me. And I am proud that I can give more as a person and as a professional to those who entrust me with their secrets and struggles.

This year, gratitude did not come naturally. I've had to carve out a way to survive, to build from the ashes, from the rubble of my shattered life. But here it is. And for that, I am grateful.

After all, I am a futurist - who else would still believe in the futures I build, brick by brick, with bloody hands, but with stubborn faith and even more stubborn hope.

Happy Thanksgiving!