• I am alive and breathing
• I am alive and breathing
• I am alive and breathing
• I am alive and breathing
• I am alive and breathing

Today is one of those days when I wake up ready to bite someone’s head off. All I want to do is chase down a chicken and stab it to death with a fork. I would never actually do that; we don’t have any chickens in the nearby vicinity, and a duck just wouldn’t be the same. What I would do is jump all over my husband’s case for dripping water on the dining room floor, for leaving the cupboard door open, for looking at me wrong or at all. But – as long as I’m still alive and breathing, I also have the ability to choose how to respond, how to greet my day with goodness and life in spite of my seething anger. I am breathing. I can take several deep breaths to send oxygen to a brain that is clearly in need. I am alive. I can choose to feel my anger and investigate what my anger is trying to tell me. My anger is often a signpost to unhealed grief. I can acknowledge the grief buried deep within my chest, which I can feel trying to escape through a tight throat and clenched jaw. I can sit with my grief for a moment. I can thank my grief for protecting future me from experiencing the same pain as younger me. I can choose how I need to respond today, in this moment, to feel my grief, and then, allow it to pass.