Gratitude for the Rest of Us
In case thankfulness is not flowing like gravy
If you haven’t heard, the holidays are upon us, which is feeling pretty strange to me. Although this is a different kind of strange than last year’s when I found myself in England for Thanksgiving. I ended up helping my friend have a baby at home before any medically trained humans arrived, the entire spectacle well beyond my pay grade. That’s a story for another day, although may I suggest celebrating Thanksgiving in England? The grocery stores and traffic situation are a dream!
This year’s strangeness has something to do with how much we’re all holding. The world feels heavy, my people’s lives feel heavy, my own grief feels heavy. All this heaviness makes commencing a month of merriment feel weird. A few days ago, I clicked between ideas for a giant graze board I’m prepping and an article about how the bread has run out in Gaza.
Maybe you’re better at sitting with the paradox, but I’m finding it a lot for my little heart to hold.
And now we’re at the week where everyone talks about being thankful.
I’m thankful, right? How could I not be?
Look at all of this.
How could I not be?
All right: ready, set, BE THANKFUL! I spin my internal Rolodex of spiritual practices until it lands on gratitude, and a slip of paper spits out an answer: Compile Thee a Comprehensive List of Gratitudes.
Oh yes, the ol’ gratitude list. Easy-peasy. I open my journal and attempt a list, but end up blanking out and staring into space until a scoop of gelato made from water buffalo milk comes to mind. Wow, Jac, could you be any more obnoxious? It’s so obnoxious I hate myself a little. Also, you cannot believe the perfection that is this gelato.
Three more entries get scribbled down: brilliant red maple leaves, good news about an aunt’s cancer, kids laughing at a dumb unicorn joke in my new book. Maybe there’s more, but this whole endeavor is making me tired. And I’m sorry to report I’m not bubbling over with gratitude.
I stare at the list, disappointed in myself. Four? I only have four things I’m grateful for and one of them is gelato? Really deep here, Jac. How could I not have enough to fill notebook after notebook with a thousand good gifts? What is wrong with me? The voice is familiar and mean, my life-long companion, criticizing my every move.
Much of my work in the last few years has been paying attention to when it shows up and listen instead for a much kinder voice. I try to listen now, and eventually, somewhere through the self-loathing comes a gentler tone. How about a little curiosity? A little compassion for yourself? Maybe you are tired because you are sad. Maybe you could sit with the sadness and make a list of sorrows instead. And if that doesn’t turn out to be a good idea, we’ll try something else.
I exhale. A list of sorrows? Feels risky. I’m usually up for any kind of experimental self-reflective exercise, but isn’t this going to make me depressed? Before I can contemplate further, the list begins writing itself. It pours out as I consider what I’ve been carrying, the sadness that’s filled my pockets in the last months, the last year. It grows as I imagine the faces of people I love and their pockets full of grief, the people I don’t know and their grief too.
I exhale again, this time with relief. I’m surprised at the solace it brings to name the sadness, to make space for it, to not force the positivity as I often do. The piles of grief sit in front of me, all heaped up, and I’m not sure what to do next. After awhile, the only thing I can manage is to pile the heaps in God’s hands and mutter, “Help, please,” as I sit in the silence.
Somewhere in the quiet, I hear myself laughing.
A moment popped into my head as I reflected on a last minute trip home to Illinois to be with family who were going through difficult times. I wasn’t expecting the trip to include much laughter, but I underestimated the wholesome nolstagia of the Midwest during harvest. And I underestimated my 90-year-old grandma. Gram has more life in her pinky than most of us do in our enitre bodies, and she was determined to join in the fun and ride in the combine (for you city slickers, that’s a giant tractor) to watch her corn roll in.
The combine is a hearty climb, and we weren’t sure gram was going to make it up the stairs. Not to be easily deterred, my uncles and cousins hatched a plan to put her in the front scoop of another tractor and hoist her up if needed. I remember standing in the field, corn stalks swirling around, dogs and kids scampering about, all of us doubled over with laughter at the thought of gram being scooped up like a baby and lifted into the sky.
The laughter cut through the sadness then, and it cuts through the sadness now.
I’m not sure I would have gotten there if I hadn’t started with grief.
Maybe that’s the way to gratitude this year.
Maybe its the time to start the Thanksgiving dinner conversation with, “What’s been hard for you lately?” before we move onto to all the thankful business. And maybe I’ll be only one sobbing in my mashed potatoes, but I have a sneaky suspicion that if we allowed a little more room on the table for sorrow, delight might show up and surprise us too.
Happy Sad Thanksgiving, my friends.
Making room for the sadness and sorrow. So lovely and needed.
beautiful