Years ago, as we walked down the street after a meeting, the woman who was then my boss asked me a question.

“Do you feel blessed?” she asked – suddenly, and with no indication of what had prompted the thought.

I can’t recall many of the specifics about the conversation that followed, but I remember my response: Yes. Absolutely. I seem to remember that she expressed a similar feeling. That she, too, felt blessed. (Which is interesting to me now because she split up with her husband a while later. Looking back, I wonder if it was her way of saying, “Yes, I am blessed. I have the freedom to choose the life I want and I choose something different.”)

I’ll never know, but it doesn’t matter. In that moment, for whatever reason, she made the question about me.

On the surface, I live a fairly average life. In many ways, I am simply as blessed as many. In some ways, I am less so. In some ways, much more. I am blessed.

Blessed.

There is so much meaning in that word for me. It’s not one single, specific thing. It’s not even the sum of a list of things. It’s not a person or a quality or a memory or an experience. It’s a feeling.

The dictionary defines “blessed” as “blissfully happy or contented” but it’s so much more than that to me. It’s a big feeling, a physical feeling, one centred in my chest somewhere near my sternum. It bursts with gratitude. It’s something that knows and sees all I have been given and is stronger for appreciating it. It’s something that, if I don’t appreciate it, will go away. It exists because I know it exists.

This feeling was lost to me for a while. PPD took it away. It wasn’t even replaced with “why me?” It just simply wasn’t. I didn’t miss it, because I couldn’t see it. I didn’t remember that it had ever been there. But now it’s back. And, in case I might choose not to see it, it’s come back in tangible form.

I recently wrote about participating in the Planting Love giveaway. I participated – donated – because I couldn’t not donate to this cause. Lots of others felt the same way and in doing so have blessed Amy and her family, raising over $1000 for their medical bills. And, while it wasn’t my motivation, I won something. I won this, donated by Alely from her ohsweetleeme Etsy shop [update: now closed]:

Like I said, I’m blessed.

I say this not to chase away those of you who don’t feel blessed, who can’t find that feeling, who don’t know where it went or who don’t remember whether they ever felt that way in the first place. Because I, not so long ago, felt all of those things.

I say this not to sound snotty or to make you feel bad about how you feel. (And I certainly don’t say it to put you off reading my blog.)

I’m not saying, “Be grateful for what you have because you are blessed, whether you can see it or not” because I know some of you can’t see it.

I say it on this particular day because today I’m mindful of it again. Today was one of those days where a whole bunch of people acknowledged something I had done and thanked me for it, turning what was otherwise a fairly normal day into one where I felt hugely, wonderfully, beautifully blessed.

I say it because I think it’s important to acknowledge these things, because I’ve spent way too much time in the last couple of years focusing on what was wrong instead of what was right.

I say it because to say it is gratitude, and that’s something, recently discovered, that was missing in my life.

I say it because to say it is to hold on to it, and I don’t want this feeling to be taken away again.

I am blessed.