Daily Gratitude: You can interpret this several ways. I look at the rainbow with me right smack in the middle and my past is at one end and my future at the other. I choose to look at my past in a much more positive way than I did for decades. The facts will never change but how we look at them can change. And, actually, it’s possible that the “facts” we remember aren’t even truly accurate. As I’ve learned more about IFS (Internal Family Systems), I’ve been able to work with my various parts and learn about their interpretations of those “facts”. Now that I know that parts don’t grow older but are stuck at the age when they came into existence, it makes it so much easier to realize why they feel as they do. Along with that I know I can help them see “our” life in a different way, and as such, this can remove a great deal of anxiety. Something that once seemed unbearable (like another dinner where there’s the constant threat of “incoming”), can be understood because i can see how my father’s actions were intended in a much different way than I interpreted them. When you calm your nervous system, your peripheral vision returns and you see more than you ever thought you could. That rainbow really does have two pots of gold.