Well, it's done.  I have packed up the family home and the For Sale sign is affixed firmly in the front lawn. I am torn about this.  Part of me is happy to have achieved this step, while most of me is screaming inside. Really loud heaving sobs of heartbreak.

For some, maybe most, moving out of a house is probably not a big deal.  For me, having been raised by chronically transient parents, having been homeless as a child and then marrying into the military, this home was everything to me. It represented settling and security for the first time in my life. We move into it in July of 2004, when my husband "retired" from the military for the first time.  We were supposed to live as a normal, civilian family and enjoy our kids, grow old together and live out our sunset years there. That was the plan.

Any military family knows that the plan never survives first contact.  I should have known that. I naively thought we could handle anything. Surely after a military career including 5 overseas tours (eventually 6), civilian life would be easy.  Not so fast. It seems the one thing military people cannot handle, is civilians. Without a gun and a battle plan, anyway.

This day has been coming, well technically it had been coming for 11 years now, but the timeline I have actively been a part of has been since July.  At that point I decided to sell the house instead of holding on to it, and its memories. Having come to that decision, I found us a home and my girls and I moved out in mid-September.  I have been gradually moving out ever since.  I know I dragged my feet. Holding on to what I knew was pointless, but I was so reluctant to say good-bye forever.  It may have been just a house, but to me it was my dream. My future. An embodiment of such promise that would never be.

Every Fall and Christmas season, it is hard to fight back. To fight against the sadness and depression that come with the despair that accompanies the memories of those times. It is a time and process that I have yet to conquer.  So this holiday season, I found a new tool: Gratitude.

When I am overcome by sadness brought on by memories of better times, even of bitter times, I have been changing my perspective, and shifting my frequency, to that of gratitude. Gratitude for having had that experience. Even if the rest was not to be, I have had all of those blessed experiences.  And I am so grateful for them all.  Really and truly.  I often think of the Garth Brooks song, The Dance.  I could have missed the pain, but I would have had to miss the love, the blessings and the lessons along the way.  It is better to have loved and lost, etc, etc, etc...  This is not an easy shift to make, it is actually physically difficult.  I believe it to be the route to healing my heart, though.  And allowing my soul to grow from this.  I have opened my heart to gratitude, and I am grateful for the knowledge to be able to do so.

Bob Hope was a comedian and performer famous for ending his routines with a song...Thanks for the Memories.  I borrowed the title for this blog post from that idea. 

Happy New Year!  May 2016 bring you hope, love, faith, prosperity and joy. And may you remember to be grateful for it all.