3 Ways to Step into Gratitude

Mar 4, 2022 | Hope & Encouragement, Women's Wisdom

There’s a very old Hebrew Psalm that’s been circling in my mind lately. It’s an ancient prayer that is definitely not filled with praise or thanksgiving, instead, lament:

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars
we hung our harps,
for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” (from Psalm 137)

In other words: How are we to be grateful or express thanksgiving when it is demanded of us? Or, maybe even more true, when we demand it of ourselves?

The list is long of things that can make gratitude feel arduous and disingenuous:

  • Racism, sexism, ableism, capitalism, colonialism, consumerism — an endless list of “isms.”
  • Family dynamics so tense that silence feels like your wisest choice — but also the most frustrating one.
  • Fears about money.
  • Fears about global warming.
  • A growing awareness about the ways in which the subconscious belief that you are “too much” is impacting, well, pretty much everything.
  • A resurfaced, painful memory from your childhood that keeps playing itself like a tape in your head, endlessly looping.
  • Hard parenting moments (if not full-on seasons, even years).
  • Political strife.
  • Uh, a pandemic!
  • Too many unspoken thoughts and feelings in your most important relationship(s).
  • A general feeling of anxiety and lostness; an internal swirling/churning that doesn’t seem to let up no matter what you try and frankly, doesn’t make a bit of sense to you.
  • Feeling like your life is in parts and pieces — disjointed, disparate, unhooked.
  • No matter how big, even loving, the group of people is, you still feel alone.

I could go on.

Asking the Hebrew people to sing songs when in captivity? You trying to feel grateful with this list? Impossible. Ridiculous. Unreasonable. Beyond capacity.

You feel the pressure to express, even feel gratitude when really, somedays, the best you can do is get out of bed.

To pretend like all of these things (and so many more) don’t actually exist — or to sweep them into some dusty corner for the day — so that you can smile and say the right things and feign gratitude is exhausting.

Feigned gratitude is also nearly-always demanded of us. Especially as women.

  • Just keep smiling (like Dori in Finding Nemo — “just keep swimming…”)
  • Make sure things are OK for everyone else.
  • Don’t upset the apple cart.
  • Keep your feelings to yourself.
  • Don’t complain.
  • And be grateful, will you? After all, things could be worse!

This last bullet point is a very slippery slope. I hear it often from clients (and even within myself at times). “Who am I to complain, compared to the problems that other people have?” “I hate to even talk about this; it feels so insignificant in the scheme of things.” “Really, I’m lucky; I’ve no right to not be grateful.”

Here’s the thing: all of those things can be true, may be true, but so are your struggles, your fears, your anxieties,  your family dynamics, your challenges, and your exhaustion!

You are not all good or all bad, all happy or all sad, all grateful or completely ungrateful. You are a complex and amazing woman who holds a multitude of realities and emotions and experiences and roles and responsibilities and heartbreaks and hopes — all at the same time!

This, my friend, is where gratitude can at least begin: acknowledge just how vast and deep all of you actually is — not only the “acceptable” parts but also (and maybe even more) those parts that you have the tendency to sweep into those dusty corners.

Gratitude has to be, gets to be, inclusive: the hard stuff as well as the beautiful, the ache as well as the celebration, the failure as well as the success, the loneliness as well as the love, the reality as well as the hope.

I hate to be too reductionist, but here’s what I believe:

Acknowledging what is true is gratitude.

Honestly name the reality of who you are,
and what you feel,
and all that you experience,
and all that makes you crazy,
and all that you wish you could change,
and every single thing you wish for, hope for, desire, and deserve.

That list? Those things? All of them? They are you!

When I consider you? All of you? Well, all I feel is grateful. Yes — you are conflicted and confused and complicated. Yes — you are generous and genuine and gracious. Yes — you get angry and frustrated and irritable. Yes — you feel afraid and worried and anxious. Yes — you are trusting and optimistic and willing to try yet again. Amazing!

The ability to take in, see, hold, and honor all of you is what generates gratitude. Acknowledging what is true. Not forced. Not demanded. And maybe even somewhat unexpected. It’s grace, really.

*****

So, 3 ways to step more deeply into gratitude?

  1. Acknowledge the complexity and beauty and conflictedness of all of you. Then you can better allow the same in others.
  2. Allow the pain of the world and its beauty. Then you can feel into just how deep and vast and infinite your emotions truly are. (One of them might just be gratitude.) YOU are that deep and vast and infinite!
  3. Begin to name the parts of you that you’ve worked so hard to overcome or at least keep hidden. Yes, it can feel overwhelming and scary; but it is the very thing that invites you to step into a story (and life) that is honest and expansive and true and real and raw and vulnerable and tender and fierce. And that? Mmmm. Definitely gratitude!

It is true: there is MUCH that gives us cause to be ungrateful — as it should! Endless internal and external messages that deny our value and worth. Patriarchy. Objectification. Sexual trafficking. Domestic violence. Pay and leadership inequity. Misogyny. The list is l o n g.

But this is also true: in the midst of all this, still, YOU are you!

Mysteriously, amazingly, serendipitously, incomprehensibly — you survive, your story endures, your wisdom persists, your heart loves.

I don’t know how else to respond, but to say thank you.

I’m hopeful that you can say the same — to yourself and for yourself, in grateful response to all of who you are — even now, even still, in the midst.

May it be so.

*****

Every week I write a letter to my subscribers. There’s no skimming the surface; instead, it’s filled with truth-telling and diving deep. I’d love for you to have it. And I’d be super-grateful. Every Monday morning — your inbox — from my heart to yours. SUBSCRIBE.

About my recent book-proposal rejection

Nov 19, 2021 | Hope & Encouragement, Women's Wisdom, Writing

A month or so ago I got a rejection letter from the publishing company to whom I sent my book proposal. To be fair, “rejection” is too harsh. It was more of a “suggestion” letter: recommended next steps, etc. But to say I was not disappointed would be too “light” and dismissive.

In the throes of all my emotions, I remembered a year-plus ago when I was still in my corporate position. I taught a program on confrontation. As part of the in-classroom experience, participants wrote out a statement using a particular framework and then read it (in simulation) to the person they were confronting. One part of that “script” was naming their feelings about the situation, the offense, the issue at hand. For example, “When you lied to me, I felt angry (or betrayed or sad or frustrated, etc.)” As I walked around the room and listened in, I’d inevitably hear someone say, “When you ______, I felt disappointed.” That was my cue to interrupt the process for a few minutes, head back to the front of the room, and offer the following:

“I forgot to mention: ‘disappointed’ is not an emotion. It’s your (unmet) expectations; not what you’re actually feeling. When we tell someone we are disappointed in them it evokes their shame, which isn’t going to get us any closer to resolution. What do you really feel?”

And that memory? Right. Got it.

Disappointment is real, but it’s not a feeling — not like grief, joy, anger, or fear. It’s a circumstance or state-of-things. It only shows up when my expectations are not met — which feels important to name. And it is only ever present because of me: my thoughts, my hopes, my beliefs (even if misguided).

So what do I really feel? Sad. A tiny bit angry. Frustrated. And clear…there is more work to be done.

Yes, of course: I am disappointed, too. It would have been lovely to receive an enthusiastic “yes.” But underneath that, further up and further in, when I was willing to look closely, I was able to return to some things that feel more important and more true:

  • When disappointment arrives (which, of course it does and will again), we would be well served to ask how its presence might serve us. How it might remind and reinforce exactly what we care about, why we’re doing what we’re doing, that it matters? For me, the rejection, though a sting, actually compels me to be even more committed to what I’m writing, to stay the course, to remember why it matters and just how much.
  • Look closely at what is actually happening, actually being said, actually true. This took me a hot minute, believe me. I had to read through the email a couple more times before I could find the suggestion instead of the rejection; the affirmation of the overall concept, my writing, and its importance; the encouragement to finish the manuscript and circle back. Right, that.
  • Acknowledge that disappointment has to do with our own unmet expectations, no one else, nothing else. Maybe those need to be looked at more closely and recalibrated. And maybe, just maybe, that means I need to look most closely at me not “them.” I still have agency and choice, even (and maybe especially) when it feels like it’s been taken away.

Even in writing this piece, in openly admitting that I didn’t get an effusive and immediate “yes,” I can feel the disappointment resurface. Natural. Normal. And not where I want to stay…

There’s more writing to be done!

Is beauty worth $8 + tax?

May 6, 2016 | Hope & Encouragement, Writing

As I sat down to journal this morning, I spotted the fresh tulips I bought just four days ago. They are already drooping. One or two more days and I’ll have to throw them out. Is it worth the money when
they only last such a short time? What I’m really asking, is this:

Is beauty worth $8.00 + tax?

I know the answer AND I can see the way my mind wants to weigh the benefit, the value, the worth – as though beauty (and so many other things) is practical, something to be calculated through a Return-On-Investment filter. And this got me to wondering: How many other values that defy measurement do I subject to such?

Multiple examples rush to mind:

  • The measure of my own self-worth tends to decrease the higher the number on the scale. (I’m not proud of this – even disagree with it, fundamentally – and still…)
  • I have been known to measure a blog post’s success (and subsequently the worth and value of my writing) on the number of shares, likes, or views it receives.
  • Based on the response I receive (or don’t) from a text or email I send will measure my willingness to continue to express my desire.

This kind of measurement doesn’t serve me at all! And yet, I do it all the time.

But here’s the thing: self-worth, creativity, and desire don’t bow to a cost-benefit analysis.

There is no measurement or rating to place on such things – as though we can analyze and determine in advance whether a quality like hope or love or grief or disappointment is worth it. And when we try, it’s a slippery slope. More than slippery, it’s downright dangerous.

  • The tulips are going to die. Why spend the $8?
  • Allowing myself to express grief surely won’t change the past. Why bother?
  • This happiness won’t last more than 5 or 6 days. That’s not long enough. Better to tone things down than to be disappointed.
  • Even if I don’t eat this candy bar today, I’ll weaken tomorrow. The effort at restraint isn’t worth it given my certainty of the future.

Though a few of these may sound somewhat silly, more of them sound familiar. This is exactly what we do. This is exactly what I do. Here’s my best (and most current) example:

Too often when I sit down to write I am measuring the value of my words as I go along. I hear the voice of the critic, fear certain misunderstanding, worse being ignored, and have already begun quantifying them, limiting them, cutting them off at the knees. I have already dismissed their significance and the value of my ongoing investment. In effect, I’ve done to myself (before anyone else can) the very thing I fear: I’ve ignored my own words! Sometimes I so completely pre-determine their value and worth (or lack thereof) that I never begin! (I know you know what I mean here…)

Further, in (pre) measuring the worth of something, in determining it’s value (or not) we actually enable the very thing we intend to prevent.

  • 6 days of beauty in my home isn’t worth $8 — and so there is no beauty in my home.
  • My weight will never change — and so it doesn’t.
  • My grief won’t heal anything — and so I don’t heal.
  • My happiness will never last — and so it doesn’t.
  • My writing will never go anywhere — and so it doesn’t.
  • Why keep hoping? I’m going to end up single anyway — and so I will be.

Here’s what I’m coming to:

Risky investments and not measuring the approximate value and worth, even logic, of our every move might actually be the safest bet. Buying tulips even though they’ll droop and die. Making healthy choices even though it’s hard. Choosing to grieve even though it’s scary. Allowing myself to feel joy knowing it will not last. Writing and creating no matter who understands (or not), reads it (or not), loves it and me (or not). Giving away my heart and desiring, desiring, desiring even though I might get
hurt.

Stated even more clearly, a safe bet is never as interesting, exciting, or fun as tossing our fate to the winds, holding on to hope, and being willing to risk everything for what we value most  and deeply desire.

I’m off to buy more tulips…

This Father’s Day

Jun 17, 2007 | Hope & Encouragement, Mothers and Daughters, Spirituality

I find myself in a sort of a gray place today. Granted, it’s the Seattle area and the skies are often as they look today: filled with clouds, overcast, chilly. But it feels like more than that.

It’s Father’s Day. My daughters are with their dad – and, therefore, not with me. A new experience this year. Maybe that’s part of it.

In an effort to shift to a brighter or at least clearer space I spent some time reading the liturgy of the week. I came across this excerpt from The Orthodox Way by Kallistos Ware. It touched the gray and invited some grace-filled shafts of warmth and sun…

The actress Lillah McCarthy describes how she went in great misery to see George Bernard Shaw, just after she had been deserted by her husband.

 

I was shivering. Shaw sat very still. The fire brought me warmth…How long we st there I do not know, but presently I found myself walking with dragging steps with Shaw beside me…up and down Adelphi Terrace.

 

The weight upon me grew a little lighter and released the tears which would never come before…He let me cry. Presently I heard a voice in which all the gentleness and tenderness of the world was speaking. It said: “Look up, dear, look up to the heavens. There is more in life than this. There is much more.”

Whatever his faith in God or lack of it, Shaw points here to something that is fundamental to the spiritual way. He did not offer smooth words of consolation to Lillah McCarthy, or pretend that her pain would be easy to bear. What he did was far more perceptive. He told her to look out for a moment from herself, from her personal tragedy, and to see the world in its objectivity, to sense its wonder and variety, its “thusness.” And his advice applies to all of us.

However, oppressed by my own or others’ anguish, I am not to forget that there is more in the world than this, there is much more.

I bought more flowers for the front porch yesterday. When I got up today I spotted them as I picked up the Sunday paper. They made me smile. I bought a few more when I went to the grocery store this morning – wanting even more of their color, their warmth, their reminiscent glimpsing of Eden. They permeate the gray and offer me heaven in the hear and now. As will my daughters when they return from their time with their dad. As will my parents and my brother as they visit here this afternoon. As will even gray skies as I recognize their Creator.

How like God to speak through George Bernard Shaw to Lillah McCarthy. And to me – on Father’s Day. “Look up, dear, lookup to the heavens. There is more in life than this. There is much more.”

Indeed, and not just in the heavens, but all around.