My son’s handprint Santa when he was 4.
Supply: Dana Bowman
Exhausting issues occurred in our household in October and November of this yr. We had been hit with a three-tiered Let’s Take You Out on the Knees gratitude-busting plan.
One: My husband was “let go”* from a job the place he had labored for over sixteen years.
Two: We left our church. It was a religious punch within the intestine and it felt like a divorce. It’s a protracted story. It gained’t be informed right here, however “church damage” is actual.
And Three: I received sick. Like, actually sick. It was this horrible bronchial/can’t breathe/can’t transfer factor that I’m nonetheless coping with. I haven’t been capable of run for over three months, and I nonetheless wheeze like a tragic little damaged accordion anytime I stroll the size of our home—simply strolling. Don’t even get me began on stairs.
November is when folks discuss gratitude loads. I’m a kind of folks. I’ve posted each day gratitudes on the ‘Gram. I’ve loved writing about it on my weblog. I’ve researched the way it boosts our well being.
However principally, I understood and valued the facility of gratitude with regards to my sobriety. I usually say I’m a grateful alcoholic.
Some say this can be a bit dramatic; why be glad about one thing that nearly killed me? Nicely, I’m. As a result of I’m a stronger, extra badass girl now as a result of I needed to dig myself out of a gap so deep it nearly killed me. Digging is difficult. It made me all muscled and robust like I’d had sober Cross Match, and now I can get up prime, respiratory deep, the place I can see far. And I’m so very grateful.
However these previous few months have made me marvel about how I’ve plied what I assumed was gratitude in a means that was changing into unhealthy.
Right here’s the situation: After I received sick, I saved considering, “Nicely, it’s not COVID. It might be worse!” The identical with the job factor. I saved muttering, in my stress and fear, “Nicely, none of us have most cancers! No less than we’ve got our well being! And we all the time have one another!”
And the church factor? Nicely, truthfully, I couldn’t give you a gratitude platitude for that one. Possibly religious stuff takes extra time; it’s difficult that means.
It’s the “no less than” half that catches me. It’s like I had caught gratitude on the underside shelf. It had change into a discount model with worse components and decrease worth.
My November model of gratitude had change into bagged cereal, associates. It was the Life Cereal knock-off known as Stay it Up! that doesn’t reside as much as its identify in any respect.
I had managed to wrestle gratitude into guilt-itude. “It might be most cancers,” I saved considering, when all that did was make me really feel survivor’s guilt about one thing that wasn’t even within the rotation of awfulness happening at our home. It was like I used to be lobbing each dangerous factor that might occur at my mind to see if one thing would snap me out of hysteria. This. Does. Not. Work.
I had made gratitude into an unhealthy comparability. I had mangled it.
Granted, it’s exhausting to seek out gratitude in looming uncertainty. However, that’s the entire level. Like my restoration gratitude, which nonetheless rings straight and true, it was hard-earned. It meant one thing that means.
A pal informed me about her mother-in-law, who likes to lob gratitude assaults. If my pal would touch upon the way it had been powerful to recover from her knee surgical procedure, her mother-in-law would reply like this:
“Some folks don’t even have legs! They do not have knees. You need to be grateful!”
I had been channeling my internal mother-in-law, I suppose. And, I had hooked up all these expectations to it. It had gotten all tangled. Like, if I make my gratitude checklist each morning, should not I have the ability to certain away, all of the sudden 25.7 % happier? Assured?
Gratitude Important Reads
It’s a giant, mysterious factor, gratitude. It is not a formulation; it is religion. It’s acceptance and somewhat little bit of prayer, and oh my goodness, perhaps that’s why I’ve been having such a tough time with it recently.
So, it’s early December. We went to the Christmas tree farm yesterday, and now our home smells of pine. The tree is just not Pinterest-worthy. It’s adorned with many handmade ornaments from my sons’ early days: small handprint Santas, wobbly beaded sweet canes, and styrofoam snowballs. Every decoration is treasured and only a tiny bit ugly. They’re priceless.
They usually remind me of who I used to be again then, after I had given up consuming once they had been so very small, and of who I’m now. That form of gratitude works. I concentrate on that and promise to search for the nice and cease attempting to thwack myself over the top with thankfulness. Progress, not perfection.
Oh, I am grateful for you, pricey reader. I’m all the time very grateful for you.
