Year of Gratitude by Danielle Younge-Ullman

In preparation for yogging with you wonderfully inspiring women, I was thinking of the many small things I am grateful for these days—the occasional extra thirty minutes of sleep, chili-flavored dark chocolate, a zillion cutenesses from my almost three-year-old, the way my husband makes me laugh—I could make a long list. (I still might.)

But as I think about the many things I’m grateful for this year, what I keep coming back to is challenge. I’ve had a challenging year and I don’t mean that euphemistically.

This August I had my debut novel, Falling Under, published and it was a dream-come-true. What I discovered, though, is having my dream come true was much more stressful, much harder work, more intense and full of potential heartbreak than I ever imagined. Along the road to this dream-come-true, I found a whole new world of conflict and paradox, of highs and lows, of challenges.

This year I learned what it’s like to attempt a full-time writing career with young child, a dog who thinks he’s my child, a husband who works erratic hours, a house in constant renovation and only part-time hours in which to do what feels like three or four full-time jobs. I read books on publicity, worked on publicity, conducted interviews with myself, interviews with others, I blogged, learned to pitch, wrote articles, recorded radio interviews and podcasts. I planned (and paid for and attended) two launch parties, traveled to New York, San Francisco, Boca Raton, New York again, Wisconsin and Hamilton Ontario. (And Minnesota next week!) I taught pilates two nights a week and did hundreds of hours of proofreading for a guy in Korea for money to pay for childcare. I lost weight, gained it back, did laundry, dishes, stayed up nights when my daughter was sick and slept through my writing hours the next day, panicked, calmed down, tried to work on my new book, panicked again, met with publicists and journalists, begged for blurbs from fellow authors, ran around signing copies of Falling Under, obsessed about my Amazon ranking, somehow finished my new book and and and…

And here I am.

Here I am, capable of more than I imagined but also aware I have much less time to do things than I imagined. Here I am, proud of myself and yet expecting more from myself every day and therefore more easily disappointed. Here I am deeper and stronger, more aware of joy and despair walking hand-in-hand, of exhaustion and fulfillment arriving together on the doorstep more often than not.

Here I am, reminding myself to be grateful, profoundly and humbly grateful, for the challenges presented to me, chosen by me, over this past year. I am better for them.

Thank you for having me—yog on!

Danielle Younge-Ullman has completed two novels and three plays. Her one-act play, 7 Acts of Intercourse, debuted at Toronto’s SummerWorks Festival in 2005 and her debut novel, FALLING UNDER, is newly released, published by Plume/Penguin. Danielle lives in Toronto with her husband, daughter, and their dog. Whenever she is not feeding, chasing after and/or entertaining the little beings, she is at work on her next novel.
(Read a review of Falling Under at Roses & Thorns.)