Keira-anne.com

I feel peace. I feel happy. I feel content. It’s been much longer than I can remember since the last time I was able to say those three things with honesty. So many of us long for a trouble-free existence and lament over our lives that are anything but carefree. I know because I’ve been there and I’ve spent a lot of time longing for those very same things. Sometimes we choose to feel sorrow, just as we have the ability to choose joy. How much would we appreciate sunny days if we never had to experience rain?

Perhaps I’ve experienced epiphanies, or maybe it was just my time to take forward steps in a way that’s beyond my understanding. Instead of days doubled over in anxiety, I choose to smile. Instead of stinging tears, I choose laughter. Instead of reclusiveness, I choose to hug and embrace.

I am so, so blessed to be in a place where I love myself, where I have huge handfuls of people that love me and let me love them back and instances where I can enjoy people that simply give me the giggles. And believe me, I’ve been giggling a lot these days.

Let me take inventory and check out my “happy stock.” These are some things that are causing my frowns to turn upside down:

- My brother becoming more of a man than I ever imagined

- Rainy days and cozy nights

- Roots and their applause-worthy eco-initiatives

- Rediscovering Extra bubblemint gum

- Puppies!

- A mom and an aunt and an extended family that count for more than 100 relatives ever could

- Finding a picture on Facebook of the boy who broke my heart at 18 only to find him with a receding hairline in his 20s

- Jennifer Garner movies

- Knowing that Christmas is only two months and two days away

- Knowing that both Michael Bublé and Hanson have fantastic Christmas records

- Friends that are as much of homebodies (and camera whores) as me

- Falling in love with Vancouver Island all over again every time the ferry docks

- Falling in love with fall every time a leaf falls in my path

- Discovering new stories about amazing adventures