Peach Friedman
author, educator & trainer
intuitive fitness for women

I used to do this thing, when I was feeling blue, that I started during recovery from my eating disorder…

I’d make a gratitude list.
I’d write down all the things I really, truly, genuinely felt grateful for in the moment. Not things I felt I should be grateful for, like my health or my family or blah blah blah, but things I really, earnestly felt I could be grateful for at that moment in time. It was usually things like my feet, the sun, my mom.

Anyway. I am making a list today, but not because I am struggling. I am making a list today because I am brimming with gratitude for so many things in my life, for so many people, for so much transformation lately. Like everyone, I have been through many changes in my life, but becoming a mother is making me revisit the way I choose to care for myself. I feel like it requires a new dimension of tenderness–to Peach, from Peach–than I’ve ever needed before. Mothering Victoria is making me mother myself with more love and care than I ever knew possible.

And this practice is yielding grand results. Because despite less sleep than I have ever cumulatively dealt with, and a totally dependent, crying, spitting up, pooping, hungry baby, despite a whole new turn to my relationship with my husband now that we’re both parents, despite a terrible economy and massive hospital bills from a 16 day NICU stay, despite being 3,000 miles away from my homeland Virginia, my mother, my sister…I. Am. Feeling. Happiness.

Real Happiness.

Peach’s Gratitude List, March 5, 2009:
1. My yoga community in Sacramento
2. Sophie’s yoga class this morning
3. The co-op
4. My amazing new babysitter
5. Jeffrey Jeffrey Jeffrey
6. The California sun (seriously, who ever thought I would say that!?)
7. My legs (that they reach, move, and are white as light)
8. Chocolate
9. While I’m at it…Big Spoon
10. The glass of water I’m drinking
11. The internet!! Without you, sweet technology, I would be having the loneliest winter…and forgotten half my friends birthdays
12. The chubby, cherub-like face of my little Victoria
13. My other Victoria, my sister, who is really growing up (how did that happen??)
14. The Bugaboo and my brother Nat for making it possible!

me and daddy at the car dealership in Charlottesville, many a year ago, but just the same ol’ me

I only recently discovered that there is a name for prenatal depression. Well, there is, and I had it. We all know about post-partum depression, and I’ve had some of that too. I told my husband lately that the last time I can remember being really, truly happy was the year of our engagement. But now, such it is that in some strange way, I actually feel like myself again. In a strange new land in some strange new relationships, for sure, yet here I am, no more, no less.

I just want to add #15 to my list…
I’ve made a career out of revealing my life to the world. It feels good to tell the truth. Grateful for that.