Gratitude is living ten thousand miles and a four-thousand-dollar airplane ticket away from home, yet learning to build one for yourself anyway.

Gratitude is trading one holiday for another: a ritual you never grew up with, but one you’ve started looking forward to.

Gratitude is knowing your family is safe and held, even when you’re not the one there to hold them.

Gratitude is the hazy nights with strangers: lust, longing, the soft thrill of being no one’s past, nor ever having to be their future.

Gratitude is leaving a five-year relationship because the version of you who stayed would not have survived it, not in the way that matters.

Gratitude is the morning sound of your dog’s paws, fourteen years of soft insistence, teaching you that love can be simple, even if impermanent.

Gratitude is the friends who knew you before the ones you met on the internet: proof that people can know you equally, simply in different ways.

Gratitude is turning a year older, somehow not looking it, and still wanting to learn and try new things.

Gratitude is starting over without knowing where it ended or where it began, but choosing to do so anyway.

Gratitude is arriving in new cities with nothing but your name, your hunger, and the quiet hope that you can make a life out of sheer intention.

Gratitude is being fully alive inside every moment that asked too much of you, because you love this life, and get to meet it again tomorrow.

Happy Thanksgiving.