Category: Grateful Heart Monday

Welcome to another Grateful Heart Monday, where expressing a piece of gratitude remains the only focus in my writing at the beginning of every week, which for today is for something that I took for granted until I lost it, and now have thankfulness for it, as it starts to return, and that is my smell and taste.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever in my entire life expressed any form of gratitude over my senses of smell and taste, but definitely for my sight and hearing though. I just assumed that something like my smell and taste were two things that would always be there. Then I contracted COVID. And well, as most know by now, a great majority of people who come down with COVID also lose some or all of their smell and taste for varying lengths of time. Prior to getting sick with COVID, I had a relatively good sense of smell and taste. Things like hand soaps and shampoos were usually very strong smelling, even when I got a cold. And most foods I consumed I could taste even the slightest of spices and such. But, a day after I came down with COVID, I lost all of my ability to smell anything and the only thing I could taste was either sweetness or saltiness.

It really is true that when you lose something, you really begin to become grateful for what you had before you lost it. Maybe that’s why we all seem to be so unappreciative of those cloudy or rainy or snowy days that go on and on, that is until those crystal clear blue sunny skies return where they then seem all the more amazing. If we didn’t have those long periods of weather we didn’t want, would we ever appreciate the weather we did want? Maybe that’s why we occasionally need to lose things to find more gratitude in our lives. Well I can definitely say that entirely losing my sense of smell and taste brought an incredible amount of appreciation for two things I never have thought about much and just took for granted.

Nevertheless, as my smell and taste has slowly begun to recover, catching occasional whiffs of my orange-vanilla body soap or tasting the sharp tanginess of some cheddar in my salad has been absolutely something to celebrate and be grateful for. As these two senses return and fluctuate in their efficacy, I am doing my best now to express my appreciation to God and offer gratitude for them.

Out of all this, I think the biggest lesson I learned and the most gratitude I have is for the simple fact of how important it is to remain grateful for even the smallest of things we might not ever think about in our lives, including all the parts of our working bodies. So, yes, I’m thankful today and dedicate this Grateful Heart Monday for my fingers and toes being able to still function, for having all my limbs still, for all my organs continuing to work, for bodily waste happening as it’s meant to, for all that my body still does to keep me up and running, which of course includes now two senses, my smell and taste, that are two things that I will never take for granted again.

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

Welcome to another Grateful Heart Monday, where gratitude remains the only focus in my writing at the start of every week, which for today is for my dear friend Darrell McCarthy, someone who gave me a second chance after failing to be there for him at a very difficult point in his life.

Over two decades ago, when I used to live in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, I met Darrell and we quickly became friends. We went to church together, took trips together, went out on weekend nights to bars and clubs together, and well frankly, we hung out a lot. He was one of my closest friends for the longest of time. But, when I moved away from the D.C. area, our connection became limited to phone calls and text messages and were more and more infrequent the longer time passed without us seeing each other in person. I never stopped caring about him, as I’m sure the same was true with him, it’s just that with not living in the same vicinity or even within a short driving distance to each other, life moved on for the both of us.

Darrell met someone pretty awesome not too long after I had left the area, a guy named Randy, who eventually became his husband. They would go on to spend many, many years together, until one day when Randy tragically passed away due to some serious health issues. By that point, Darrell and I were probably communicating about once a year over the phone and occasionally via Facebook. Given that I don’t follow anyone on Facebook and have an empty newsfeed, I didn’t even know his partner had died until another friend had let me know. I had every intention to contact Darrell to offer him my condolences when I learned of this, but instead, somehow, I forgot. How I forgot I don’t even know at this point, but zoom forward to more than two years later, when just recently I found myself thinking about Darrell quite a bit, wondering how he was, when I noticed on Facebook we were no longer connected as friends. I reached out and messaged him to ask why and that’s when he reminded me I had completely forgotten to even reach out back when his husband had passed. He was pretty upset, which I totally understood, as I would have felt the same if the role had been reversed. I’m grateful to say though that after talking with him on the phone a few days later, that he accepted my heart-felt apology and amends and still wanted to be my friend. The whole experience was truly a humbling one because I do deeply care about Darrell, especially as he’s someone who was there for me through many of my own tragedies and traumas of life.

So, yes, I’m very much grateful for my friend Darrell for accepting my apology and amends and still wanting to reconnect with me. It says a lot about the type of guy he really is and always has been. Loyal, caring, compassionate, and extremely funny, especially when he talks of his singing idol Mariah Carey or his guilty food pleasure, that being Krispy Kreme donuts, I can’t imagine a life without Darrell being a part of it, even if we are separated by many miles these days. That’s why I’ve dedicated today’s Grateful Heart Monday to you Darrell, as you have given me much to be grateful for today through your forgiveness of my forgetfulness over a very painful part of your life. Thank you, my dear friend.

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

Welcome to this week’s Grateful Heart Monday, where I just want to offer my piece of gratitude for something that’s simple to write, but wasn’t simple to heal from, and that being for finally feeling just about fully recovered from contracting COVID-19 after so long of dealing with symptoms from it.

COVID-19 is like the engine that could. It just keeps on going and going and going, making the person regularly believe at times it may never go away. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being as severe as one could get with the virus, I made it all the way up to about a 7, coming just short of having those massive breathing issues that many others faced. I am quite thankful that my case of COVID never got that bad and have an incredible amount of compassion now for those who reached an 8, 9, or 10 with it, who landed in a hospital, many of which never even came home having perished from it.

Having been one of the lucky ones who did recover from COVID, I’m absolutely feeling thankful for that and am no longer taking this pandemic lightly like I once did. While I still have some minor smell/taste and dermatological issues that arose out of COVID, I can safely say now that the worst of it is truly over for me at least. There were countless moments though that this virus made me really question whether its symptoms would be permanent, especially when my severe hypochondria got the best of my thinking.

Now that I’m much better, I must say that the worst thing I ever did while suffering from COVID was most definitely read all the stuff about the virus on the web. While it can probably overwhelm anyone given all those worst-case scenarios out there, for someone with severe hypochondria like me, a guy who has spent countless moments obsessing in my brain with incessant worrying around my health, it totally exacerbated all of my COVID symptoms the more I read about it. So, I absolutely am thankful I can report now that I made it through something my brain told me repeatedly I wasn’t going to.

The fact is, getting COVID-19 is no joke. For some, it has lasted for many months, while others, even after nine months or more, are still reporting to have significant lingering effects from it. That’s why I consider myself blessed and grateful that I am feeling much better now, especially because this virus didn’t land me, or my partner who had it as well, in the emergency room, or worse.

So, in the end, I am grateful for all the lessons I learned in humility from contracting this virus given how I had been handling it with kid gloves prior, but I’m filled with even more gratitude for having survived and healed from it now. It’s something I don’t take lightly and most definitely deserving of being the focus of today’s Grateful Heart Monday.

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