I’ll admit, I’ve never been good at gratitude. I never really understood it. As someone who struggled with depression at one time in my life, I have become adept at identifying unhealthy thought patterns and attempts at fostering gratitude have always led to such thoughts for me.
When Oprah or a spiritual leader or a well-meaning friend or therapist would tell me to keep a “gratitude journal” and think every day of the things I had to be grateful for/about, I tended to come up with a list of things I have that I don’t deserve/didn’t earn, the privileges and unfair advantages I have in my life- or else those things that could be taken away in this precarious world we live in.
I am blessed with intelligence that gives me an unfair advantage over many in the working world. I was blessed to be born into a family that emphasized the value of education- or else I’d never have learnt to read, much less received two graduate/professional degrees. I have a good job, but no guarantee that it’ll be here tomorrow. (Let’s not even get into the scary thoughts around the people I love). But, you get the idea, attempting to be deliberately grateful left me feeling guilty and vulnerable; which really aren’t terribly helpful emotions.
But, I found myself, this past week, writing a Facebook post full of “I’m grateful” without having any of the negative emotions associated with it. He is fine now, but a nephew of mine who is about 12 had gotten something stuck in his throat and the sprawl of our town being what it is, he’d been sent from one emergency room to another in an ambulance so that he and his parents ended up around the corner from my work and over an hour away (in good traffic) from his mother’s car and their home. Rush hour and their other child’s activities being what they were, my brother and his wife needed someone to sit with my nephew for a while so they could get other things sorted. I was in the right place at the right time (with my breast pump with me) and Sweet Pea was at our home (an hour away in traffic that time of day) with my mother and a stash of frozen breast milk in the freezer. I was able to help and to be confident that Sweet Pea was in good hands and I was able to assist my nephew and his parents. And it felt good that things lined up so that I could be useful- without being worried about Sweet Pea.
I’m not sure if this was a one-off or not. I actually tend to think that my emotional health started to improve the day I decided to stop waiting for “Mr. Right” and start taking steps to build the life I wanted (to be a mother) on my own. It might also have to do with changes that came from a 2 year struggle with infertility. It might also have to do with having found a “village” both in the form of a new church and in the form of an extended network of moms – both SMCs (Single Mothers by Choice) and others, who leave me feeling supported. But whatever it is, I feel like I have “discovered” this gratitude thing everyone has always been talking about. And it does feel as good as they say.