The Good, the Bad, and the Grateful

By A. Daniels

The Good, The Bad, and The Grateful is personal story chronicling everyday teachers, family, friends, and co-workers who were spiritual teachers during the first 50 years of the author’s life. It is a celebration of all the defining moments of life, good and bad, and how they all give us blessings. It encourages reflection with famous quotations from some of the greatest spiritual teachers of our time after each chapter to help bridge the ordinary events in the author’s life to some of the most well-known spiritual practices.

The intention of this book is to inspire anyone who reads it to take time to reflect on his or her private life and realize how we are all evolving into more beautiful beings. It is the author’s hope that readers use this book as a guide to help identify the angels in their lives and take time to share their stories, good and bad, with each other and demonstrate how grateful they are to have loved and learned despite any obstacles or pain they may have experienced.

True leadership serves and empowers. The back of the book has names of organizations that are on the front lines helping those in our communities with mental illness. A portion of the proceeds from each book will be donated to help raise mental health awareness. Each reader can also log onto the author’s website to directly to purchase the book and post the name of a loved person in their life that is suffering with mental illness and send them an intention for healing. It is a spiritual wake-up call to affect change in a safe environment with an open mind-set and a willingness to act with a collective, clear, joyful, intention.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Apr 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9781665739344

A. Daniels

This book was written during the pandemic of 2020. It was an exceptionally challenging time for A. Daniels and her family. Writing this book helped her heal and fed her soul. The book was borne out of love and gratitude for all the people and events that have made her who she is today and will become tomorrow. The quarantine of 2020 gifted her one of the greatest treasures-time. Time to reflect honestly upon her life and see clearly the good and the bad, and to find a way to see life lessons embedded in her stories. It helped her find the courage to write this book and share it. She details raw, honest, details about how her ordinary life took a turn in an extraordinary way. She tells the painful story of how unexpected mental illness changed her life and how her marriage of twenty years ended abruptly. She shares her gratitude for her personal pain and her journey to start over with the wisdom she has learned in her life.

Book preview

Miss Smith

The Wake-Up Call

Fourth grade was my most challenging year of elementary school. It was an awkward physically transitional time imbued with knobby knees, skinny ankles, bad haircuts, and memorable iconic 80’s fashion which included florescent socks and silver handbags. I was a skinny, brown-haired, nine-year-old proud of her newly acquired white oversized belt, leggings, and feathered hair. I looked like every else on the outside, but I did not feel like everyone else on the inside. I felt very discouraged and uninspired to complete my schoolwork. I would stare at the assignments and find my mind wandering to topics that were not academic requirements. I managed to get a solid C in Math because I had a very difficult time focusing on my instruction in the classroom. The sixth sense that you sometimes experience when a teacher looks at you and you can feel the disapproval piercing through you seemed to be a regular distraction. Her disappointment in me was confirmed at a parent-teacher conference where she would claim, Not everyone can be smart. I felt labeled already.

I struggled to find friends that made me feel accepted, my schoolwork lacked effort, and my direction was questionable. I was lost in a way. This is the first time I can remember questioning my life’s purpose. I would think to myself, Why I am here? Why do I have to learn this? I was introspective at a young age and aware that I was different. Some kids seemed to just get to school, do their work, get good grades, play nicely, and leave. They looked happy, well-adjusted, and most importantly well-liked by my teacher. I was jealous at times. I asked myself, What makes their days easier? Maybe school was just as challenging for them, but they hid it better. Regardless, I felt like my world was unlike my classmates’ lives and I spent most of days at school feeling alone and sad.

The summer came and like most active kids with truckloads of energy, I went back to playing kickball and flashlight tag outside in our small suburban neighborhood, and I forgot about my academic struggles. Being outside in the fresh air surrounded by nature has always calmed my restless soul. As a kid I felt grounded outside because the sun did not judge me. It warmed my skin and radiated a healing power without saying anything. After all, I was productive with sweat dripping off me and company around me. I played outside until the daylight waned, and my mother called me home. I was busy. Playing outside was a great distraction.

As the days grew shorter, and the season started to turn, I started to think about my future. I could not dodge the pressure of the return to school. I spent time thinking about how I felt in fourth grade. I knew my schoolwork needed more focus. I intuitively knew that education was always going to be a part of my life’s purpose, even if I did not understand why. I asked myself some hard questions. What do good students do? How can I emulate them? What do I want to be known as? An inner voice was talking to me, and I was trying very hard to ignore it. I have come to realize as an adult that my inner voice is a gift, it’s my intuition, and it told me to look around me.

The closest person to me was my oldest sister, so I watched her. She was a good role model. She always got great grades. What did she like to do? She liked to read, and she did her homework before she played outside. I decided that although I wasn’t the smartest kid in my family, I could change some of my habits. Maybe if I tried to do my homework before I played, I read more, and I focused a little longer, my grades would improve. This became my new strategy for success. Although the outdoors called me when I came home from school, I learned to do my homework first and then reward myself with time outside when it was complete. Looking back, I realize that moment may have been the first time I started thinking about delayed gratification, a concept that I could not name yet, and one that I would study intently in college many years later as a philosophy major.

Like any good plan, execution is important, but there was another variable that stacked the odds in favor of success- Miss Smith, my 5th grade teacher. I know it sounds silly and cliché, but she made me feel like it was possible to change the course of my life. I can still remember the clinking of her high heels, her wavy blond locks with feathers, and the faint sound of Barry Manilow playing on the record player during art class on a Friday afternoon. Her kind words and positive energy helped me feel safe to fail. She was the first influential person in my life that was not a family member. She is the earliest example of a person that comes to mind when I think about gratitude in my life. She taught me to trust. I don’t remember much about her, just how she made me feel. My strategy may have failed if Miss Smith did not believe in me the way she did. It is because of her that I did not let myself get labeled as the dumb kid. Looking back on my elementary school years, I know now that she had a greater impact than I ever realized. She helped me find value in perseverance while demonstrating what kindness and