Back in the latter part of 2006, I was living in an awesome apartment right in the heart of Mainstrasse Village, which is a great little German Themed Village in Northern KY. It was an awesome apartment, and I had talked with the owner of the house about him selling it to me, but to no avail. It was his steady income, and he didn’t want to give that up. Since I had moved back to the Northern KY area from Clearwater Beach FL, I had been renting, and had finally decided to stay, and therefore I needed to buy something. Well, I kept noticing this very unique Condo complex, which sat right at the base of Devou Park, alongside the Ohio River and directly across from Downtown Cincinnati. They were so unique for the area, as they were all built high up on piers, and that reminded me so much of when I’d lived in Florida, which I miss like crazy.

Well, I kept thinking about how nice it would be to live in this community, but nothing more than that. After a while, I realized that because I was so attached to my current apartment, I would never really be serious about buying anything. Well, all this happened before I knew about The Secret & I had just started learning about it in Jan of 2007. I realized then how little gratitude I had for all of the great things in my life & soon realized that if you’re not grateful for the good in your life, you will lose it.

On Feb 8th 2007 at 4:20am, my neighbor downstairs woke me up by trying to break my door in. He was yelling for me to get up & get out. I didn’t understand what was happening, as I was still deep asleep ‘til this happened. Well, I had on my boxers & grabbed a hoody & ran downstairs to find my neighbor out of breath telling me to grab my pets & get out, as his apartment was on fire. It was going up quick, and my place above him was about to go. I grabbed my chinchilla Louie but couldn’t find my cat Skooter. After a couple of minutes of frantic looking, I couldn’t see or breathe any more from all the smoke, so I had no choice but to get out to save myself. I ended up in the street in about 4 inches of snow, about 28 degrees, in my socks, boxer shorts, a hoody and a wastepaper basket covered with a towel that housed Louie.

Long story short, I lost just about everything. Miraculously, Skooter lived through the fire with no harmful effects at all. At the time, I was ok with it all, actually had some kind of peace, cause I had just learned about The Secret & understood that I wasn’t grateful for all that I had had, and now, I had nothing but the most important things in life, I had my health, my loved ones that were there for me, and most of all, I had my new attitude. I knew it was all just stuff, and stuff could be replaced over time. The only thing that hurt me was that as I was going through the devastation, I found burnt up pictures of my mother, who had passed away a couple years before & all of the pics were originals with no duplicates. Out of everything I lost that day that was the only thing that really bothered me.

The Secret has a way of working things out though, and I can say, 2 months after that devastating fire, on April 12, 2008 I closed on the condo that I had been dreaming about for so long. I couldn’t have wished for better, as it is a top floor unit of a 2 unit building with no neighbors on either side, just 1 neighbor below me. And you wouldn’t believe the views of the Great Ohio River and the Cincinnati Skyline. What a lesson I have learned about the Secret to Life and most importantly, about living every day with the Attitude of Gratitude.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and may the universe bless you every day.