Gratitude, Abundance, and Self-Love: Remembering To Love Ourselves, Each Other, and This Beautiful Planet.
Sometimes it feels like the world has forgotten how miraculous it really is. Between headlines, heartaches, and the noise of everyday life, it’s easy to forget that we are walking miracles on a living, breathing planet that literally grows trees that eat sunlight and turn it into oxygen. (If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is.)
So today, I want to pause and remind us all that we are both wonderfully unique and beautifully connected. That there is enough. That we are enough. And that gratitude, compassion, and self-love aren’t just fluffy ideas they are radical, world changing acts.
There Is Enough: A Lesson in Abundance
Scarcity tells us there isn’t enough love, success, money, time, beauty, healing. But the truth? There is plenty, when we remember how to share and when we start viewing life through the lens of gratitude. When each day is seen as a gift to enjoy and to share. It is the present in more ways than one.
Writer Melody Beattie once said, “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more.” Even Oprah Winfrey echoed this truth: “If you concentrate on what you have, you’ll always end up having more. If you focus on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.” This is not to say that there are not times when the ends are not meeting, like now for many people. In my life I have found that those who walk with gratitude tend to also be those that would share as well. Just an observation. It’s not always easy to be grateful when you are hungry or without a safe place to sleep, or the basic human needs. But oddly enough people with very little are often the most generous and live with deep gratitude for all they have. When was the last time you woke up and just felt grateful to be awake and have the chance to be alive? Crazy how easy it is to forget when times are tough. I too have had my moments and I try to be grateful every day.
Gratitude shifts everything. It softens comparison, dissolves fear, and invites joy to take a seat at the table. It’s less about having “more” and more about noticing the miracles already here: your heartbeat, the sky this morning, that one friend who makes you laugh until your stomach hurts, or the way sunlight warms your face after a long week, the breeze tickling your cheek, the water that cleans your body, waters your garden, nourishes every part of you, the fire of your soul, your passion, your drive, the soil that protects the plants and nourishes all things. There is so much to be grateful for.
When we practice gratitude, we begin to see abundance not as something to chase, but as something that already exists in and around us.
Loving Ourselves Helps Us Love the World
Many of us grew up believing that loving ourselves was selfish. But Buddha reminded us long ago, “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”
True self-love isn’t about ego, it’s about integration. It’s about holding space for every part of us, even the messy, uncertain, “still figuring it out” parts. Because when we can meet ourselves with gentleness, we naturally extend that same kindness outward.
Psychologist Christopher Germer wrote, “Self-compassion is simply giving the same kindness to ourselves that we would give to others.” When we stop treating ourselves like a problem to fix and start treating ourselves like someone we love it becomes easier to love everything else: people, community, nature, and life itself.
Self-love is a renewable energy source. The more you give to yourself, the more you have to share. (And unlike fossil fuels, it won’t run out.)
Beautifully Unique, Intrinsically Connected
Each of us is one-of-a-kind no one else has your laugh, your scars, your particular way of making magic out of chaos. Yet, like trees in a forest, our roots are entwined beneath the soil.
We are part of a vast, living ecosystem, a beautifully interconnected web of life. Yes, we come from different countries and carry our own unique cultural, spiritual, and ethnic identities, but at our core, we are one planetary family. What touches one of us ultimately ripples out to affect us all, and our shared home, Earth. The impacts of war, poverty, famine, injustice, and environmental destruction may not always be immediate or visible, but they are felt somewhere, by someone, or by the planet itself. The loss of loved ones, the scarcity of clean water, the hunger for nourishment these are not distant problems; they are shared wounds in the body of humanity.
When we remember this truth, competition softens into collaboration, and isolation transforms into belonging. Your healing helps others heal. Your light gives others permission to shine.
We don’t need to be perfect. We just need to be present, appreciative, and compassionate.
And sometimes, presence is as simple as noticing how incredible this planet is. How incredible another person is. The way water always finds its way. The quiet strength of mountains. The audacity of flowers that bloom in sidewalk cracks. The Earth keeps loving us even when we forget how to love her back. That, my friends, is grace.
From Hurt to Healing: The Power of Choice
Every single person you know has faced something: loss, betrayal, grief, trauma. These experiences can either anchor us in pain or propel us toward compassion.
Trauma can be an anchor or a springboard.
It’s not about pretending the pain didn’t happen. It’s about deciding what we’ll do with it. Will we stay buried beneath it, or will we use it to grow something beautiful?
The phrase “hurt people hurt people” is painfully true. But here’s the miracle: healed people heal people. When we begin to heal ourselves with patience, humor, love and compassion, we start radiating that healing outward. We become safe spaces for others. We become gentle reminders that transformation is possible. And sometimes healing looks like crying on your couch, quiet walks with your dog, or a big bowl of ice cream.
Sometimes it’s forgiveness, whether just for yourself or with another. Sometimes it’s dancing like a dork in your kitchen to your favorite song. Whatever it looks like keep going. Your heart is doing sacred work. And your healing is exponential.
Gratitude, Curiosity, and Imagination: Our Creative Superpowers
Monk and teacher David Steindl-Rast once said, “It is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.”
When gratitude becomes a daily habit, it re-wires our brain. Pair that with curiosity and imagination, and suddenly you’ve got a recipe for joy. The good kind of joy, the “unicorn sparkles and magic” kind. The kind of joy that is contagious and uplifting.
Curiosity keeps us open. Imagination helps us dream bigger. Together, they help us co-create communities rooted in kindness, inclusion, and joy. Because thriving doesn’t mean climbing over each other, it means lifting each other up. It means recognizing that sharing resources, laughter, and love strengthens the whole. Let your imagination wander: What if every act of kindness was a ripple? What if each of us lived like the Earth was our home instead of our property? What if abundance wasn’t something to hoard, but something to circulate like air?
We might just create a world where everyone thrives.
The Ripple Effect: How Healing Becomes Contagious
When we choose compassion, gratitude, and self-love, we honor all those that fought for peace/ equality/ freedom, in too many wars, over too many centuries, one leading to the next in one way or another. Our energy says, “It’s safe to be human here.” And that’s powerful. When kindness is no longer seen as a weakness but a great strength, we will have taken a great step toward a better future for all.
Your healing matters not just for you, but for everyone you meet. Because when you’re grounded in love, you make different choices: you listen more deeply, you share more freely, you take better care of yourself, others, and the Earth that sustains you.
And soon, without even realizing it, you’re part of something bigger, a collective healing. A wave of remembering that we need each other and we are meant to be stewards and protectors, co-creators on this beautiful planet, not enemies of either. That this planet, with all her oceans, forests, and stubborn dandelions, is “our” home, and all of us are welcome.
That kindness, one action, one moment of compassion, one act of forgiveness for self or another is how we heal the world.
- What are three things you’re grateful for right now—no matter how small?
- What pain or challenge might be your springboard into greater compassion?
- How can your imagination help build a kinder, more inclusive community?
- What’s one way you can love yourself a little more this week—and what might that make possible for others?
I’m just here to remind you, you are beautiful. You are loved. You belong here.
The Earth is a masterpiece, and you are one of her brushstrokes. We all carry both shadow and light, but even the stars need the darkness to shine. And the sun always rises to remind the flowers and the trees to grow, the birds to sing, and us to enjoy another day. So take a deep breath, whisper thanks for something ordinary, and remember: your existence is extraordinary, it is actually miraculous and so is this crazy perfectly positioned spinning garden we are living on.
May we be grateful.
May we be curious.
May we be kind.
And may we never forget how lucky we are to call this breathtaking planet home.