Last Friday I returned to the origins of this project; so much was happening and I was feeling so much that I walked up to one of my favorite little gardens and took an hour to just write in my gratitude journal. The words were finicky at first as my mind, distracted, fixated on anything and everything that caught my attention. But as I started to write out what I was feeling, how I was feeling and confiding why I was feeling the way I was feeling, I started a conversation between my book and myself. I realized that one of the most beautiful things about this project is the fact that it forces me to look at every moment in my day as something that I’m grateful for, yes, but also something to write about and share with a larger group of people. At the end of each day, or a couple of days, I’ve taken inventory of what was the highlight and shared it. But in the process, some of the more personal details, the aches and heartbreaks and interpersonal interactions are very much shuttered inside. How deep can I realistically go? In my social media world, I struggle with jealousy, envy and resentment amongst a host of other emotions but combating it with public displays of gratitude leaves a lot of the personal work of asking why, undone. So I decided to do just that and focus on the act of pratyahara, or turning inward, sharing my most vulnerable self (all the why’s) with my diary, my family and a few close friends. For my diary, which sometimes reminds me of Tom Riddle’s diary without the mental manipulation, I’m grateful. On your pages are the traipses of my heart as it grows and breaks and evolves and adapts to allow for me to feel so much more.