Birthdays in the Year of Gratitude

Erica Rhodes
5 min readApr 1, 2021

“The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.” — Oprah Winfrey

Luca Upper on Unsplash

My Birthday is Monday, and no, I’m not alerting the masses (the 20 people who read my blog) to solicit your Birthday greetings. I tend to dread Birthdays.

Naturally, a Birthday forces you to evaluate where you are in your life, what you’ve accomplished since last year, and a million other little things, which usually send me into the depths of self-pitying despair.

But not this year.

Instead, I’ve made up my mind to celebrate all I’ve overcome this year.

It was a little less than a year ago when I called my sister Hillary at midnight, in a total panic.

“There’s a helicopter circling the building next door, everyone is buying all the toilet paper, and my friend told me to buy a gun or leave. I don’t feel safe here!”

She said I was welcome to visit her and the kids in Tallahassee, Florida, as long as I quarantined for two weeks upon arrival.

She even found me a very cute Airbnb a few miles away.

Days after I arrived, I got very sick and had to quarantine an additional two weeks, so was essentially isolated for a month. But it wasn’t so bad.

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Erica Rhodes
Erica Rhodes

Responses (5)

What are your thoughts?

Hi, Erica. Happy (belated) birthday. Wishing you happiness and continued success.

Just listened to your podcast with Bridget Phetasy, and found your blog. Happy 11th-day [after your birthday]. Christmas has 12 days, so I figure that I'm within the socially-acceptable range, there. You have much to celebrate, and thanks for…...

Oh Erica, sorry this arrives a little delayed, but happy the week after your birthday. And lovely to hear how your unexpected move turned out to be such a fortuitous one. I love it when life does that