Followup from Gratitude Post

Looking at my past posts, a thought suddenly occurred to me: I believe there ARE people out there reading my posts, and I've just written one about my personal experience relating to gratitude, and a thought came to me, that I believe it's not always possible or easy for some people to have gratitude in their hearts for the experiences they have gone through. It may not even be realistic, because there ARE people out there who HAVE suffered from traumatic experiences.

 

I remembered I came across this video clip of Dr. Wayne Dyer, speaking about a woman and her near death experience. She recounted that one incident, she had a date with a Marine guy (I think) and then he took her out somewhere remote, raped her, strangled her and threw her body over the cliff to die. As a result of that incident, she was left paralysed from the waist down for...20 over years I think (I can't remember the exact number), and doctors told her she'd never walk again. She first met Dr. Wayne Dyer at a seminar in a wheelchair, and he was so touched by her story that he walked over to her and gave her his purple beret. She vowed that she will return his beret to him...walking.

 

A few months later in his seminar, the very same woman was present, and in front of the entire roomful of participants, she walked painstakingly step by step on a walking aid towards the front of the room. She told the story in front of the room to everyone who was present, and how she decided to forgive her attacker when she read the news of him in jail, and who later died. She even called his mother to tell her what happened, and that she forgave him.

 

It was a powerful story, made more so by the very miracle of her being able to walk again. The title of the clip, if I didn't remember wrongly, was 'Anything is possible'. I think, if we really have a strong enough willpower, literally anything is possible. Where people once thought medical prognoses as final, there have been reports of miracles like these. And this was only one of them.

 

I thought about things like these, and I feel, although it is important to have and express gratitude and to have an attitude of gratitude, I also think that it's important to honor ourselves with what we are experiencing and feeling at the time, and most importantly to be gentle and forgiving with ourselves.