Today

Today I am grateful. For my life. My home, my independence. For my kitties. For love. For the little bit of food I have left in the house. I am grateful for being whole, for loving my body, for never having let anyone desecrate or rape it, for never having been touched in a harmful way sexually.

I am grateful for being raised in a strict household, by an
ex marine who taught me to stand up straight, stand up for yourself. That I AM somebody. Somebody important. I am grateful for my job, for the money it brings, for everything that I own and all that I don't.

I am grateful for what little wisdom I have, for the ability to describe my world and share it and have it shared. I am grateful for all my friends, people who care what I do and
who I am and love me for who I am.

I am grateful for jeans, being able to wear them and not be called names or beaten or worse. I am grateful for makeup and loving it and leaving it. I am grateful for my family, my birth, my origins, knowing my grandmother and
taking care of her.

I am so very, very grateful for my life today. For everything that I have experienced and everything that I have been spared.

I am so blessed, and I never knew it until today, this moment, when I read this morning two plays, one about women and their vaginas, and one about women in Bosnia, and their abuse at the hands of war. Doing the play The Good Body, by the woman who wrote the other plays is so necessary. And I am so grateful to be able to do so, without fear of being discriminated, smeared or shot.

I am truly blessed. I love my life. I love my fears. I love my weaknesses, I love everything I have ever been
and ever will be.

Amen.

(text: S. Bolda, Georgia; picture: N. Baltazar, Canada)