gratitude Archives - Ann Hedreen, Writer Teacher Filmmaker

Waking up Grateful

Ann Hedreen2025-11-24T14:29:53-08:00Categories: arts, Creative, featured posts, film, nature, politics, reading, Seattle, Uncategorized, urban life, writing|Tags: 2025 elections, Choreographer Dani Rowe, d'Elaine Johnson, David McCullough, Epstein, Everett Herald, Government shutdown, gratitude, hope, Joachim Trier, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Seattle, Sentimental Value|

Gray gets old, say the skies of this particular November. Sometimes you’ve just got to splash the sunrise with a bright band of orange and let it melt into a wash of peach and pink. Sometimes you’ve got to just drop everything and put on a show. Which suits my mood because lately, I have been waking up feeling grateful. Big G, little g, every kind of grateful. Why now? In this month, in this city, where the days are getting shorter and darker so rapidly it’s hard to keep up? And yet here I am, bathed in gratitude. For so many things. Here are a few: The tiny, barely-pink-yet buds on my ancient Christmas cactus, which never ever used to bloom, because I neglected it for about three decades, until one day, about a year ago, when I decided to treat it with the respect it deserved, being so old and still inexplicably alive. The Cooper’s Hawk who perched on a branch right outside my window for a good long stare-down. He was curling and uncurling his claws. Unsure whether to stay or go. It was like we were having a phone conversation with our eyes, instead of just dashing off a good-morning text. I didn't dare unlock eyes and reach for my camera. This happened days ago, but I can’t stop thinking about it. Those eyes! All the leaves, gold and orange and red and now mostly gone from our block, but still lighting up the dark spots in the parks and woods. I’ve [...]

Phaedra

A long time ago, my daughter had a friend. Her name was Phaedra. I thought of her a few days ago when I saw the first fiddlehead ferns unfurling in Seward Park. The ferns always make me think of Phaedra because she was just starting to unfurl, to stretch up and out into the world, when a drunk driver killed her at the age of seven. We know neither the day nor the hour: we don’t know whether we’ll have seven years or 17 or 97. It’s what makes life so intensely precious. What makes gratitude for the time we do have mandatory. Or is it? Mandatory? South African philosophy professor David Benatar is the author of a book with the intriguing title, Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence. In a recent New Yorker article, Elizabeth Kolbert explains the book’s contention that, quoting Benatar, “The amount of suffering in the world could be radically reduced if there were no more of us.” Kolbert calls it his, quote, “Conclusive Conclusion. If we all saw the harm we were doing by having children and put a stop to it, within a century or so the world’s population would drop to zero.” This school of thought is called “anti-natalism.” Anti-birth. Which is not to be confused with the abortion debate. This is not about family planning, this is about preventing ALL births. About measuring the value of all of us and concluding it would be better if we just stopped. No more people. I [...]