When Accessing Gratitude is Hard

Hello, Slow Take subscribers! I’m Heather Lanier, author of the memoir, Raising a Rare Girl, and four poetry collections, including Psalms of Unknowing. The Slow Take is my monthly newsletter, inviting us to lean into what makes us feel more human. Think of it as the opposite of a Botox billboard or an AI-written thank-you note. There are only real thank you’s here. Thank you for being here!

My paid gig is “Writing Prof,” so I’ve been a little quiet here this semester. But grades are in! So, I’m returning to my usual reflections on art-making, creativity, and life. Enjoy…

I’ve never been one to keep a gratitude journal. I know self-help experts tell us we should, for all kinds of reasons—to stem off winter blues and live our best lives NOW and save our weary souls—but when I sit down to name all the good in my life, it can sometimes stir my heart about as much as reciting a recipe for Oobleck.

The other day, though, I caught a surprise wave of gratitude via an unexpected route. I was listening to a podcast where the host attempted to pose various hypothetical tragedies to reach her broadest audience. You know, trying to relate to different bad things out there: “I know for some of you, your relationships are on the brink of divorce…. Or you just received a terrible diagnosis…. For others of you, your job doesn’t feel meaningful to you at all.” This is a trope right now: trying to reach everyone’s sorrow.

I was doing laundry. I felt a little ragged, but I wouldn’t say I felt ungrateful. Still, hearing that list of hypothetical terribles opened up genuine thanks for all the unnamed, unseen goodness in my life. I love my husband; my routine colonoscopy was clear; my job is plenty meaningful in the grand scheme, even in this era of AI-Loving Overlords. Gratitude entered via a pinhole of light and spread out like a bath of sun on my tired, laundry-doing shoulders. My gratitude got bigger and bigger and until it opened up into full-blown joy. It was just a random Tuesday morning.

[It’s The Slow Take’s first video! My husband and youngest kid tossing pink petals at me. That’s how joy sometimes feels.]

Raise your hand if you’re excellent at seeing what’s not there, what’s a problem, what’s bad or thorny or worse? It’s not our faults. This is apparently a biologically honed skill. Here’s Nadia Bolz-Weber on the subject:

Our brains are wired to keep us alive, not happy. When something feels threatening (physically or socially) we get a rush of cortisol and adrenaline. This was useful when we needed to remember where the saber-tooth tigers were. . . . But now, bless our hearts, we get the same neurochemical dump from comment sections and streaming news services as we used to get from wooly mammoths. . . . For some reason our brains just don’t have the same urgency around compliments and thank you notes.

As others have put it, good things slip off us like Teflon. Bad things stick to us like Velcro.

With biology like this, sometimes you have to tripwire your own brain. And for those of us who are better at worrying and seeing what’s wrong, maybe this is one way to tripwire ourselves into genuine appreciation. “What’s good?” can sometimes feel like a weirdly hard question to answer. “What’s not terrible?” might be an easier on-ramp. That question sometimes leads me to realize what’s actually pretty good. For instance:

My feet are not covered in warts and bunions. In fact, my feet feel pretty damn good! I’ve been walking on them all morning!

My basement is not flooded, has never flooded since I’ve lived in this house. In fact, I have a basement! A place where I do my laundry! Oh yes, I even have a laundry machine!

You could try it, too.

Meanwhile, for those of us who struggle to access “thanks and praise,” I wrote us a poem. Full disclosure: I genuinely tried to write a poem of thanksgiving, and this is what came out instead. Hah, the creative life. You can’t control it. (Thanks to Inkwell for publishing it.)

Praise Song for the Reluctant

Praise sounds like pray
with a zzz. My praise
is sleepy, like it nodded off
in the Lazy-Boy and forgot
to give thanks
for upholstery. My prayer
sees need, seems needy
in the knees, kneels to thank
and on accident asks
for what’s missing—or
just wallows in want, at war
with a breeze. There’s always
another inch to desire, another
door, more grass greened,
ungrabbed by me.
But praise sees what’s present.
Beloved’s eyes: blue light
no bulb ignites.
A doctor’s words: no need
for a knife. I have to will myself
to suss out that every second
contains a hundred ways
the world has already held us:
coffee in the cup
another day, hands that gathered
the beans, cow to make
the cream, calf to teach
the cow to make.
Here’s mostly to the calf—
her perfect need
tugging and tugging
milk toward hunger—
--Heather Lanier
@heatherklanier

South Jersey / Philly folks! Come hang with me! At 7pm Friday, May 29th, I’ll be reading poems at Inkwood Books in Haddonfield with poet Warren C. Longmire. There’s an open mic after. Come say hi!