I bristle at a lot of advice I’ve received and I cringe sometimes, worrying that I am perpetuating toxic ideology. I won’t dare to assume what another human is going through, and I am no model on how to handle life beautifully and gracefully.
In fact, I often feel like I have more Grrr-attitude than gratitude.
The mere mention of “gratitude” can cause internal (and external) eye-rolls on my part. It evokes images of placidity, complicity, and a dereliction of duty. Like, instead of going after the things that need to be changed, women are told to “be grateful” for what we have.
And like a grumbling Anya in “Anastasia,” I get real snarky real quick.
But I am no longer a sullen teenager raging against the inequities of the world. I am a woman who faces them. I am a mother working to change the things that I can. And what I’m learning is that gratitude is less about counting your blessings and ignoring the curses, and more about seeing both at once. It’s about maintaining those blessings in the presence of curses.
Because the blessings abound (okay I just threw up in my mouth a little), but they really do. I have a roof and heat and a safe bed. I have clean water and clean air. It will rain soon and that always feels nice. I have power and internet and have been vaccinated against horrible diseases that killed my ancestors and plagued my father-in-law.
All of that is true, and none of it is less true in the face of all the other horrible truths that surround me.
Navigating grief is a heck of a thing. I am feeling every feeling I’ve ever encountered. Rage, despair, painful joy, brutal hope, and bright red anger when that hope proves poorly founded. And while I struggle to accept gratitude within my grief, because it reeks of Disney and Pollyanna, I am (gulp) grateful for my grief.
WHY? HOW?
Because it means I have held on to my humanity though all of this. I grieve because I love, and while it makes me vulnerable to pain, I would not give up my capacity for love for anything in the world– not even the protection of isolation.
Vulnerability is hard, but it beats the socks off of the numbness I’ve sought and surrounded myself with for decades.
Gratitude does not mean I’m throwing a pink filter on everything and saying “this is great” or even “everything happens for a reason” (EWWW!!!!). Nothing is more insulting than to claim someone’s pain and suffering is all part of some grand design. My anger rears up at the arrogance and callousness of statements like that.
No wonder I resisted “gratitude” for so long. I had a corrupted concept of what it meant. Gratitude, for me, is not “choosing to see the good instead of the bad”, (also known as selective acceptance) but seeing it all. Putting AND in place of OR. That things are terrible and beautiful. That people are loving and cruel. That I am grateful and overwhelmed with grief.
That opposing truths do not cancel each other out, but add depth to the human experience. Their duality is not a contradiction.
We can be grateful for 4 weeks paid leave and still know that it is not enough. I can be grateful for my beautiful family and still mourn the losses we’ve sustained. I do not have to pick one side, I contain multitudes.
My grief is as deep and overwhelming as my love.
Pretty Good Ugly 