Gratitude in practice
a meandering list of examples of why I need to make a gratitude list
Gratitude. There are endless pieces out there on the practice of gratitude, including scientific studies of how a practice of gratitude positively impacts our moods and mindsets. I don’t need a research report to prove this to me though. I know, just from experience, how powerful it can be to have a daily practice of gratitude.
That said, I don’t have a daily practice. I have not ever been able to successfully have a daily practice of anything besides basic hygiene, coffee and repetitive anxious thoughts. BUT. When I have had periods of times in my life where I consistently practice writing down things I’m grateful for, for multiple days in a row, my brain, my heart and my nervous system feel different.
I know I said I was going to write about last week’s house concerts but because Thanksgiving is this week, I’m distracted. Thanksgiving, for all of the criticisms of this holiday, does offer me something: a time to reflect on what we are thankful for. We are going to Michigan tomorrow to visit my family. It’s an 8 hour drive but with a 2 year old, we’re expecting at least 10. I have always loved Thanksgiving with my mom’s family. My mom has 5 brothers and sisters so our family holidays often consist of 30+ people as all of her siblings now have spouses, kids, grandkids. Over the years, the holiday looks different depending on who is hosting. Some houses are smaller which means crowded rooms with card tables, bumping into each other, adding to the loud chaos I love so much. Other houses are larger, more spacious which means we are more spread out, having to yell across the room to get someone’s attention, yet again adding to the loud chaos I love so much. Some years have had a more somber quality with quiet sharing around the table of what and who we are thankful for, many of us moved to tears. But some of my absolute favorite years started with a football game, hot cocoa around a bonfire and then a raucous dance party at my uncle’s performing arts studio which is attached to his house. I think these specifics only occurred for two years but they will forever stand out in my memory. It was a few years after my grandfather had passed away, my grandmother’s dementia was slowly taking hold and I think we all knew we needed some celebration.
I look at these pictures now and feel immense joy and gratitude for that time while feeling simultaneous sadness for all that has changed or been lost. I know this year will be different, yet again, but every time, no matter what, it feels like home to me. And it reminds me of what I love most in life: people. For whatever reason, I need reminders thought, all the time! I can get distracted and pulled into prioritizing money, work, achievement, adventure, travel. But when it comes down to it, what I really value above all else, is people. And that means, family.
“Life is all about relationships. That’s what it is! Relationships!”
One of my mother’s many nuggets of wisdom she would repeat for us.
Times when I have had a gratitude practice, of actually writing down the things I am grateful for, have been great reminders to me. They help ground me, bring me down to dig my roots deeper into the soil I am nourishing to grow a life in my ideals. Not the life I can sometimes get caught up in, in the clouds, flying around, chasing whatever beautiful new bird flutters past. The life that I know, when I’m at the end of it, I’ll look back and say, okay, I may have made a lot of mistakes, I tried lots of different paths, but I remained kind and true and I learned to trust in the values my mom taught me.
During the pandemic, three of my close girlfriends and I were on constant communication on text. We call our text thread the Group Text. We were in constant communication before and after the pandemic as well but during the pandemic, it evolved into a different kind of support. One that transcended our initial connection and bond, our careers as touring musicians. During the pandemic, we all were facing many challenges, changes, evolutions in our life. We were dealing with loss, grief, birth, growth, facing ourselves and our demons. I don’t remember who suggested it but one day, one of us suggested we start a gratitude chain. We each would text each other 5 things we were grateful for. It started as a practice and eventually, as life goes, we fell off of it but every once in a while, when someone is feeling particularly in need or particularly in abundance, we will start a text, “Anyone feel like a gratitude list today? Here’s mine!” And thus starts the chain. No matter how I am feeling that day, flying high on life or in the depths of despair, it always helps level me.
The first few months of my daughter's life coincided with the first few months of my mom’s ‘new life’. My mom came home from being in the hospital for 3 months, only a month before my daughter was born. So the summer and fall of 2021 was a massive adjustment in our home, as well as in my parents. My mom was learning how to survive, recover, heal and live with this massively life altering brain trauma and debilitation. My dad was learning how to be a 24/7 caretaker for his wife of 40 years, all of a sudden handling the load of the house, cooking, cleaning, as well as bathing, feeding, moving, dressing, handling every single thing for my mother, not to mention her appointments, healthcare, rehab and maneuvering a small mid-century ranch home not set up for a wheelchair or anyone with disabilities. Oh and he was, and still is, working his job as Director of Remediation and Recovery for the state of Michigan’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy. Aaron and I were navigating having a newborn as self-employed musicians with no paid parental leave, still in the midst of a pandemic and with no family support close by. It was a lot. There were some very very very dark days, to say the least.
At some point, I suggested we try a gratitude list. We had to get back to basics. So we often started our mornings by making coffee, doing a 10 minute meditation holding Georgia or letting her rock in her swing, and then we would Facetime my mom. On any given day, there was a lot to be incredibly sad about. But what about the blessings we could still focus on? Some days it honestly felt like bullshit. Some days one or all of us couldn’t think of a thing to feel grateful for. We all had our own grievances, things to be angry or sad about, not to mention extreme sleep deprivation, fatigue, newfound disabilities, newfound restrictions and limitations on our lives. But when I think back on that time, I believe it helped. Getting back to the basics, being thankful or grateful for a hot cup of coffee, the ability to even be on Facetime talking to each other, a roof over our head, freshly cut grass, a few more hours of sleep than we were used to…it awakens you. It awakens you to goodness that is all around you in that moment. Not just hopeful goodness that you can potentially experience again in the future. But the goodness that is happening right here, right now, in this exact moment. When there can be a million things wrong, bad, painful but you can look around and see, “Oh but this flower on my dining room table is beautiful. The sun being out today is warm and brightening. The food we didn’t struggle to buy is nourishing. The fact that we feel safe from violence, is a privilege many in the world do not have.” It’s not putting on rose colored glasses or forcing a Pollyanna point of view, it genuinely can shift perspectives.
As I now look back at those lists we made, they make me feel gratitude for that time, and for how far we’ve come. Seeing things like “walking 200 feet without a brace” for my mom and realizing that she doesn’t wear a brace at all anymore and walks many more than 200 feet on any given day now, or “that Jeni lifted her toe for the first time,” reminds me of how much progress has actually been made. Seeing things like “Georgie’s pacifier to shut her up” makes me laugh and remember the way sentences used to come out of my mom’s mouth in the early days of recovering her language and ability to communicate. Or the day of 8/13/21 where my gratitude list starts with, “Mom didn’t die.” and ends with “Georgia’s smiles,” reminds me of the spectrum of gratitude we felt. Things like ‘the light coming through the windows’ and ‘Jeni’s still alive’ share the same attention, energy, breadth.
These are the reminders I need.
This last week, I’ve been in the hamster wheel of coming home from several heartwarming shows, working and running around in our weekly routine, getting ready to travel for the holidays, reflecting on what passed, what’s coming, all while trying to be make sense of the heaviness and gruesome cruelty always but especially present in our world right now.… It's often the kind of mix that can get my mind racing and inevitably turn to anxiety and what I identify as the in-between slump, especially since my mom’s stroke. The stillness that happens when you can’t avoid your feelings by being on the go. I’m grateful every day for the life I have but it has changed so much and looks different from what I envisioned that some days it’s hard to not feel sad. Especially as we lead into the holidays, I can’t help but long for the holidays I thought we would be having right now. In my alternate version of life, where my mom didn’t have a stroke, we would be driving to Florida this week instead of Michigan, meeting my parents on the beach at their timeshare. My mom would be chasing Georgia around the pool, my dad would have his baseball hat and wind-breaker nearby at all times, we’d go on family walks along the beach, order lunch on the patio, do jigsaw puzzles at night and Aaron and I could even go out to dinner alone, knowing Georgia was safe and taken care of, without paying for the childcare (what a crazy concept). It’s the life I thought we would be living, the life I had, and it still feels hard to accept: it's just not our story right now.
I was making dinner the other night, fighting these feelings of sadness, chopping away at onions while Mickey Mouse Club played on the speakers and Georgia sat at her table in the next room, coloring with crayons.
“Mommy?” I heard her voice lift asking for my attention.
“Yes baby?”
I looked over at her. Her head was still down focusing on her drawing, coloring with focus. I wondered if she was even conscious of calling out for me or was it absentminded babble but then she replied quietly, while keeping her gaze down at her paper, coloring away.
“You’ll always be my friend.”
These are the reminders I need.
This moment is at the start of this week’s brand new gratitude list.
I’m curious. What are you grateful for right now? Do you ever make a gratitude list? What kind of reminders do you need?