Three days left in the year, and Three Gratitude Entries to go before reaching my goal of 100. I have tried over the year to remember to be grateful for the little things, like the Starbucks employees who start work at 4a, so that when I pull into the drive-thru at 6a, someone is there to make me my Chai tea latte. But the truth is, what I am most grateful for in my life are the people. And so, this last week\u2019s worth of gratitude entries are going to be about the people I am grateful for.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gratitude Entry #98 – J & CJ<\/strong> And while I missed their wedding, J & CJ have made sure I have always felt included in their lives. They have taken flack from CJ\u2019s family about it but have always stood up for our friendship. I am Auntie E to their son and love all the opportunities I have to hang out with the three of them. Or to babysit him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I do not know that I could ever put into words exactly how much J & CJ\u2019s friendship has meant. We used to do family dinner every week, and while that is on hold for now, I think that is still the right way to think of them. I have a great family I was born into, but I also have this amazing chosen family. A family where we, over and over again, choose each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Just like with my birth family, things are not perfect. Over the 25 years, my friendship with J has waxed and waned. There have been times when we barely talked. But for the last 10+ years or so, that has not been the case. And we have found ourselves being major support for each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This year, the way we celebrated Christmas was with a video call between C & myself, D, J & CJ, and E. It was a family phone call. And it was pretty perfect. Three days left in the year, and Three Gratitude Entries to go before reaching my goal of 100. I have tried over the year to remember to be grateful for the little things, like the Starbucks employees who start work at 4a, so that when I pull into the drive-thru at 6a, someone is there to make me my Chai tea latte. But the truth is, what I am most grateful for in my life are the people. And so, this last week\u2019s worth of gratitude entries are going to be about the people I am grateful for. Gratitude Entry #98 – J & CJJ has been my friend for over 25 years now. Our friendship has had ups and downs, but she really is my BFF. When things first hit the fan a few years ago, J was the first call I made. And she dropped everything to come and hold my hand through the first terrible 24 hours. I would not have made it through these last few years without J. And while I missed their wedding, J & CJ have made sure I have always felt included in their lives. They have taken flack from CJ\u2019s family about it but have always stood up for our friendship. I am Auntie E to their son and love all the opportunities I have to hang out with the three of them. Or to babysit him. I do not know that I could ever put into words exactly how much J & CJ\u2019s friendship has meant. We used to do family dinner every week, and while that is on hold for now, I think that is still the right way to think of them. I have a great family I was born into, but I also have this amazing chosen family. A family where we, over and over again, choose each other. Just like with my birth family, things are not perfect. Over the 25 years, my friendship with J has waxed and waned. There have been times when we barely talked. But for the last 10+ years or so, that has not been the case. And we have found ourselves being major support for each other. This year, the way we celebrated Christmas was with a video call between C & myself, D, J & CJ, and E. It was a family phone call. And it was pretty perfect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1326,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gratitude"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/erinshanendoah.com\/alienanthros\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/dog_heart-e1578069584574.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p75MAh-ln","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/erinshanendoah.com\/alienanthros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/erinshanendoah.com\/alienanthros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/erinshanendoah.com\/alienanthros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/erinshanendoah.com\/alienanthros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/erinshanendoah.com\/alienanthros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1325"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/erinshanendoah.com\/alienanthros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1327,"href":"http:\/\/erinshanendoah.com\/alienanthros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1325\/revisions\/1327"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/erinshanendoah.com\/alienanthros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/erinshanendoah.com\/alienanthros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/erinshanendoah.com\/alienanthros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/erinshanendoah.com\/alienanthros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/strong>J has been my friend for over 25 years now. Our friendship has had ups and downs, but she really is my BFF. When things first hit the fan a few years ago, J was the first call I made. And she dropped everything to come and hold my hand through the first terrible 24 hours. I would not have made it through these last few years without J.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"