For people undergoing mesothelioma treatment and for their families, Thanksgiving can stir up mixed emotions. You are grateful to all be together at this special time of year but you do not know what the future holds. You cannot help but remember other Thanksgivings when mesothelioma and mesothelioma treatment were not an ever-present factor in your lives.
Giving Thanks For Each Precious Moment
Inspirational author Katrina Kenison expressed these thoughts on her blog for Thanksgiving 2012 and they seemed appropriate to share with you today:
“Gratitude, as we all know, is not a given but rather a way of being to be cultivated. It doesn’t come packaged like the Stouffer’s stuffing mix nor is it ensured by the name of the holiday. No, real “thanksgiving” requires us to pause long enough to feel the earth beneath our feet, to gaze up into the spaciousness of the sky above, and to stop and take a good, long, loving look at the precious faces sitting across from us at the dinner table.
Life can turn on a dime. Not one of us knows, ever, what fate has in store, or what challenges await just around the bend. But I do know this: nothing lasts. Life is an interplay of light and shadow, blessings and losses, moments to be endured and moments I would give anything to live again. I will never get them back, of course, can never re-do the moments I missed or the ones I still regret, any more than I can recapture the moments I desperately wanted to hold onto forever. I can only remind myself to stay awake, to pay attention, and to say my prayer of thanks for the only thing that really matters: this life, here, now.”
Inspirational Words from a Slain American Journalist
In a more recent writing, Kenison expresses thoughts worth sharing based on an excerpt from a letter by 31 year-old Steven Sottloff, the second American journalist slain by ISIS, published in the New York Times:
“Reading these words, words written in captivity and smuggled out by a former cellmate of Sottloff’s, my heart broke for this innocent man, for his grieving family, for the suffering that yielded such urgent wisdom. And now, sharing them here, weaving this small connection between you and me and a young man whose life was violently taken, my heart heals just a little bit, too.
Live your life to the fullest and fight to be happy, Steven urged his family. Everyone has two lives. The second one begins when you realize you have only one.”
So this Thanksgiving, I echo Steven Sottloff’s words to those of you undergoing mesothelioma treatment. Live the life you have now as if it was all you had because it is. Live your life to the fullest and fight each day to be happy. Have a good Thanksgiving.