This Week's Mindful Morsel 🍪 | November 26, 2025 — gratitude for the hard things

Happy sweet Wednesday 💜

I’d like to first send out a ginormous wave of gratitude for all the support and community I’ve connected with over this past year. I’m extra grateful for the opportunities I have to spread some mindfulness and joy in places that are receptive and in need. May we all be so lucky ✨

I’d also like to take this opportunity to reflect on how grateful I am for the hard things we go (and grow) through. I’m specifically referring to the smaller scale things we handle, maybe on the daily or weekly — things we might get so frustrated and annoyed with. And while I wouldn’t wish them on anyone on purpose, I see how we emerge more capable, more resilient, and even brighter than we might have ever thought we’d be.

We’re going through a good string of growing pains in my house. My daughter is growing up, and that means we’re experiencing a healthy mix of separation and maturation, temporarily regressing back to younger childhood behaviors, and springing without warning into teenage mentality. It’s a wild ride for us both.

There’s a lot of tension sometimes, and there is also so. much. awesome. — from the amazing conversations and ways we connect on deeper levels now, to watching her express her own needs and get curious about her interests, to getting a little more free time to explore things that fill me up in different ways, and still leaning into these beautiful family traditions we’ve built together. Pure magic ✨

And today I’m extra grateful because it really landed within me how much I’ve grown and healed from being a parent. I’ve learned stability in love and family, what it feels like to know that an argument isn’t the end of the world, that you can always take a mulligan, and that hugs have this ancient healing power that we don’t tap into enough.

The way I grew up taught me none of that, but along the way, as I’ve been learning how to be the parent I want to be, I’ve been reparenting myself. And that is some big love, and I’m bursting with gratitude for all of it.

In the face of all the things we witness going on in the world today, I hope you recognize how you yourself are a pocket of light. You are a mystical being who has done more than anyone knows or gives you credit for, and you not only persist, you flourish. You make the world better. Thank you for all the ways you show up through the hard things for yourself and others.

With extreme gratitude,