Gratitude in tricky times

How’s everyone doing? Do I have friends and fellow kindred spirits here who still feel sad/upset/distraught over the election, and who don’t quite know where to put those feelings? How does gratitude play into things: Is it a necessary and good practice to keep up, or does it start to feel like toxic positivity, a method of covering your eyes and ears to drown out the news?

I think it’s crucial to keep up your gratitude practice even in (especially in) tough times. My Thank You Year (in which I wrote 365 gratitude notes to fam, friends, strangers, etc) was born in Trump’s first go-round. 

So my 2017 holiday season had been a bummer. I felt Grinchy walking around Brooklyn, looking at the fairy lights and the beautiful trees framed in brownstone windows. It all felt like artifice in a time when greed and fear and hate and bigotry and misogyny seemed to be winning. 

And then, sitting on a commuter train in January 2018, I turned to a stack of thank you notes I’d promised to fundraiser donors. I wasn’t looking forward to the task, so I was surprised when writing those notes started making me feel better. Lighter. My shoulders relaxed; my heart rate seemed to slow. I got off the train feeling more alert, more like myself. (Gratitude is powerful medicine!)

Inspired by that feeling, I dreamed up an entire year of gratitude. But before I committed I hesitated, thinking, Am I putting my head in the sand? Is there harm in refocusing your thoughts away from what is wrong in the world and toward what is good and right and wonderful?

Ultimately I decided that staying in my current state of low-grade crankiness didn’t help anybody. And then I went on to have one of the best years of my life, because of gratitude.

So on that post-election Wednesday morning a few weeks back, my younger son asked, “Will we be okay?” I assured him that, yes, we will be okay. That we are safe. And then my older son chimed in, “We are safe, but maybe other people won’t be. And that’s what’s really sad.”

So here’s what I have to say: You can be grateful for your beautiful life and also mad! (About the BS book bans, about rampant and cruel transphobia, about any of it!)

You can stay mad while remaining sane. Gratitude helps with the sanity part. 

Later that Wednesday, I jotted down a fast gratitude list that included NYC, friends who feel the same, my quiet work space, the Dumbo library. 

When I am feeling blue, I try to remind myself: Turn away from the screen and towards paper. A journal, a list, a book, a thank you note, a drawing (see Wendy Macnaughton’s lovely newsletters A Little Gratitude in the Storm and Macro-Gratitude).  

That brings us to this week. Thanksgiving is the one day of the year when almost everyone in America thinks about gratitude. You can’t really help it! That might mean looking around an abundant table at the faces of loved ones and thinking, Wow, I’m lucky. I’m lucky that I belong to a community of people, and that I have enough food to eat, and that food is delicious. 

My challenge for you is to turn your gratitude from a feeling into an action. That feast didn’t just appear. There’s the farmer who raised the turkey; the person who prepared it for you; the person who set the table. Someone brought the dessert, the wine. Someone is cleaning up. Someone’s playing with your kids, perhaps, allowing you a moment. 

Of course, you could thank these people verbally or via text or email. But, I would consider jotting down your grateful thoughts—in a card or, like I did after one Thanksgiving, on the back of printed out photos of the holiday dinner (see above). Affix postage and watch those grateful thoughts spread joy. 

It’s more important now than ever. 

xo and happy thanksgiving,

G

PS: I’ve been giving gratitude talks/workshops to companies and at conferences, in person and virtually. Here’s a little sizzle reel of me talking about the lessons I learned in my Thank You Year. If you think of anyone who might want to book me for an event, I would be so grateful if you could forward this along!