In my little house we hang up a cardboard tree for Halloween. It sits alone on the wall with bare branches as a spooky Autumnal scene until the clock strikes midnight on November 1st. Then that tree becomes our gratitude tree. We cut out paper leaves and each night we pick one and write down something that we’re grateful for. My daughter’s favorite part is taping the leaves on the wall and branches while reading what each person has written. By the end of November we have a tree full of leaves and a mind full of gratitude. 

Turning November into a month of gratitude is groundbreaking, I know. But it is truly something that I look forward to all year long. It’s been a powerful exercise for me to look at what I already have before the whirlwind of holiday shopping and advertising blows through.

This year I want to include books to our gratitude tree. Those books that have brought a sense of awe, grounding, or contentment into my life as I have read them. Many are memoirs of people that have lived through war, mental health struggles, or other dire experiences. Their lives and memoirs leave you in wonder of people, the world, and life.

The first two books I want to spotlight are: “When Breath Becomes Air” by Paul Kalanithi and “The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying” by Nina Riggs. Each book is a reflection on the authors’ lives and cancer diagnoses. These books so beautifully harmonize with each other. Both are unbearably heartbreaking and impossibly beautiful. (One aspect of beauty is that the authors’ widowers met and fell in love after their spouses’ untimely deaths. A little metaphor of the continuity of love after loss.)

“When Breath Becomes Air” is a book that pops up in my mind often. Paul’s description of the pain that cancer brought into his life, both physically and mentally, helped me to understand what the disease is capable of. Paul was a truly remarkable person, he accomplished so much in his young life. He really used time to run after his passions and dreams and I’m so glad he preserved in writing this memoir in his final days. My gratitude takeaway from Paul is “breath”.

I was a single & childless woman when I read “The Bright Hour” so I didn’t fully appreciate Nina’s story as a young wife and mother who was battling cancer. Now that I have two small children I find myself reflecting on how much Nina loved and cherished her family. No small feat when she was in the thick of toddlers and treatments. I’m sure that some of this clarity came to her because she knew her time with them was short and she truly had to live in each moment with them. My gratitude takeaway from Nina is “time”. 

I will continue to share some of the books that I’m grateful for throughout the month of November. What are some of titles that you most love? Let me know in the comments below!