Not long ago I got a very strong message in my dreams. The message came at a time when I was mumbling through some self-inflicted struggle in my life.

So, what’s the message I got?

Write Love poems.

Spirit always talks to us in our own “language.” The Universe wants to get through, so it does what it must to be heard.

Beyond blogging and working on a book for mamas, I’m a poet. I have been a lover of poetry my entire life. I pursued poetry through graduate work, but after I became a mama, my writing slowed and slowed down.

Mothering days seemed so rushed with managing a household, caring for a child, taking care of work, that somewhere along the way, I forgot to write poems.

I have always believed in poetry as a healing medium. So in recent years, more than writing, my focus has been on sharing this medium with others and reading and discovering poems that move me.

But write Love poems?

The Universe knows me well because immediately my graduate-degree-obtaining ego proceeded to resist. I began to explain all the reasons why love poems are overrated, or shallow, or unable to fully express truth. I was put in my place quickly.

These are poems of gratitude. Each day choose one thing in your world that you are grateful for, and write a poem of Love directly to it.

And so the journey began. The path has been touch and go. Sometimes the poems come together smoothly and are given to me in one whole piece. Sometimes they are choppy. Sometimes they’re lacking because it’s a day when I can’t quite figure out what it is I want to thank. Some days I choose something but have no idea how to address it. Some days I just don’t get around to writing a Love poem at all.

But I try, and it’s a process that has shifted my outlook considerably.

You don’t have to write poems. Find your own way to express gratitude each day. Each day choose one thing or person or situation to thank.

The most important thing we can ever do is express gratitude. Not just for the things that go our way, but for the things that don’t. Ultimately, those things aren’t working out the way we had wished simply because something better is in the works for us or because we just weren’t quite ready.

Trust the process.

The more you express gratitude, even for the challenges and lessons you encounter, the more of what you want will begin to show up in your life. You don’t have to take my word for it; try it. Try it every day for 40 days. And then tell me what you see in your life.

I’m choosing miracles. I’ll share one of mine:

TO THE CRAB APPLE TREE

Today, gathered rain drips from tips
of your leaves, your red fruit
complimenting a green world.

I’ve only known you for one year, and still
you stand gently before my home
begging me to emerge, to walk
into your aura, to feel sky on my face,
to put Light into the world.

Patient, you wait, bringing me bright pink
blossoms in springtime. Unconditional,
you love me. Yet just today
I noticed I matter to you.

Last winter I watched blue jays
holler and tease on your branches,
speaking their truths, but never did I

realize, until this rainy autumn morning,
that you’re on purpose for me,
that you hold me, blue jays, and apples
up against the sky

as if to say: all of this is yours,
when you’re in it
it becomes alive.