Grateful Heart Monday

Welcome to another Grateful Heart Monday, where gratitude remains the sole expression in my writing at the start of every week, which for today is for my trip just over a week ago to Massachusetts to connect with my best friend Cedric where I also got to connect with a few other friends and 12 Step recovery connections as well.

This was my second trip back to Massachusetts this year, the place where I lived prior to living here in Toledo, Ohio. Normally, Cedric and I alternate visiting each other every six months, but with all the unrest going on at home, we both felt it best for me to come there instead. I was glad I did because I got to create several deep heartfelt memories in the process.

One of the most heartfelt ones included attending a gathering for a dear friend named Dave who passed away due to a motorcycle accident. There I reconnected with many of my former recovery buddies and was also given the opportunity to speak about him and what he meant to me. Having those moments to do so truly moved my heart and soul.

Another wonderful memory was spending the day with my recovery and MKP friend Sean who I’ve known for as long as Cedric and who always allows me to bare my heart and soul without judgment. On our day together, he took me to Newport, Rhode Island where I shared quite deeply with him as we walked along some of the cliff walk there, then taking a drive around the island to see some of the most amazing ocean cliff mansions after, grabbing dinner later in a nearby town at an amazing upscale seafood restaurant named The Black Pearl, continuing great conversation over a coffee next, and showing me his childhood home and neighborhood before dropping me off and heading home to his partner.

Just as heartfelt as my day with Sean was getting to see my dear friend Debbie. She was once my supervisor at Arbella Mutual Insurance eons ago and who I’ve now known as long as I’ve known Cedric as well. If there is one superb quality about Debbie, it’s that she’s an incredible listener and someone I’ve always felt safe around, enough to tell her anything, and something I’ve come to love her dearly for. The two of us had breakfast at a local joint named Joe’s Diner in Taunton, MA where she listed to my heart and saw my tears, both then and at coffee afterwards.

As for the rest of my trip, I am grateful for the new memories I built with Cedric that included watching the movie Devotion, visiting the ICA museum in Boston, traveling to Old Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge, MA, having several great meals and coffee times together, and for some laughter I was able to muster with him at times, given how low I’ve felt as of late. For my recovery friends Rob, Stevie, Kelly, Dave, and Kathy who came to have dinner with me and then went afterwards to a local Christmas lights festival on a very snowy evening. For all my other recovery friends there as well who embraced me over meals, coffees, and conversations, making me feel that living life still matters given that lately I haven’t felt much like that. And lastly for Dave who brought me to the airport on my day of return, who I had a nice conversation with on the way there, and for him treating me to a coffee and a breakfast sandwich before dropping me off.

I’m truly thankful for each of these things during this trip and for the love I received during a time in my life when I most need it.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

Grateful Heart Monday

Welcome to another Grateful Heart Monday, where gratitude remains the sole expression of my writing at the start of every week. For today, I would like to express my gratitude for all the late nights I stay up now and the peace I often experience during many of them.

I stay up really late, and I do mean REALLY late. As I type these very words, it’s 3:30am and most likely I’ll be up for another hour. Most everyone I know is already long asleep by now, or possibly getting up for an early morning shift. But I’m one of those rare few who’ve discovered a peace in the darkest of night or should I say the wee hours of the morning, where the world seems to slow way down. It’s a time where I enjoy because cars aren’t driving by. Because there isn’t talking or construction outside. And because it’s when nature even become quiet.

It’s at this time of the night when I tend to listen to some extremely deep house music, specifically a form of ethereal minimalistic house with 120 beats per minute that has very little words or none at all. Listening to this angelic sounding music form helps me to slow my mind way down and focus even more on the spiritual side of me.

On the contrary, back in the day, it was during this time of the night when I was doing all of my addictive behaviors, staying up until I couldn’t keep my eyes open from all the drugs and alcohol pumping through my system, hanging out in casinos gambling all my money away, or hooking up with strangers I was trying to get high off of the sex with them.

Now, I am choosing to transmute all that old negative energy into something far better at a time of the night that I find myself still loving to stay up into. Ironically, it’s during these darkest hours that seem to provide me the greatest of light because this is when most of my creative writing expression occurs and it’s also when I find myself connecting the most to my heart and soul, and God of course.

So, for all those out there who have found the same peace I have during this exceptionally late time of the night, I’m glad we share it in common and am dedicating today’s Grateful Heart Monday to these few hours where I feel something I normally don’t during most of my days…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

Grateful Heart Monday

Welcome to another Grateful Heart Monday, where gratitude gets expressed at the beginning of every week, which for today is for a good Samaritan at a local Starbucks who found something I left behind by accident recently that actually made its way back to me.

There are many times I’ve lost plenty of things that had meaning to me somewhere along the way of life. Jackets, wallets, crystals, precious stones, necklaces, and the like, countless things have found their way out of my life and into the lives of others who never return them. I often label each of those incidents when they occur as either the person who took them really needed it, or it was some lesson I needed to learn. Rarely though, has any expensive item I’ve lost made its way back to me, that is until I got a phone call the other day from a barista at this local Starbucks I frequent on most days.

When Will called and got my voicemail, he wondered if I had lost my headphones, as a customer had found a set of headphones intact in their case nearby where I had been sitting earlier that day, I didn’t think much of it and thought it must just be someone else’s who was sitting nearby because I always check my backpack for all my possessions before I leave any public place I bring it into it. Yet, when I checked the pocket within it where they normally sit, sure enough they weren’t there. I immediately called Will who grabbed case and opened it up for me. Sure enough they were my Sony noise-cancelling set, something that I only recently purchased because my other set had finally broke and trust me, this new pair wasn’t cheap.

When I went the next day to the Starbucks to retrieve them, one of the employees there said I was lucky as their store had  the tendency for things to be stolen. I was very thankful indeed, especially upon hearing that. While a set of headphones might not be a big deal to another, they were to me, only in that I don’t have much in the way of valuable possessions anymore.

So, I don’t know who this good Samaritan is and will never know. But I most assuredly have much gratitude for them, for my friend Will knowing to call me, and for all those out there who find things like this from time to time, where instead of thinking how lucky they are for getting something expensive for nothing, they listen to their heart and soul and do the right thing…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson