Finding Gratitude in the Mud
By: Pamela Alma Weymouth, MSW, MFA
As we launch into winter and the beginning of the holiday season a panic begins to set hold in my body. Oh (insert curse word of choice) here we go again! There’s an expectation that we need to be grateful—all while we as mothers are supposed to make all the plans, and usually still (despite feminist leaps) cook all the food, do all the shopping, the caregiving, the secretarial work, the mopping up of messes—often while also juggling careers and caring for elders too! On top of that we’re supposed to have the perfect body, do yoga, publish books, manage a worldwide Instagram following and bake our own bread now too! A few of you may be lucky enough to have “woke” partners who chip in with all of these duties, and if that’s the case —I’m very happy for you, I’m curdling with envy and I pray that one day I too might be so fortunate. In the meantime I’m really good at thinking about everything I lack.
For me Thanksgiving and the looming holiday festivities bring up a lot of shoulds. The expectations that I ought to have the perfect Hallmark family, the perfect partner, the perfect children all decked out in white for our holiday beach photo that will be airbrushed to hide my grey roots, my stress wrinkles, the pregnancy weight that never came off my chin, and the little Frida Kahlo mustache that middle-age has gifted me with. No my holiday card will not be on time, will not be airbrushed and probably will arrive just in time for the end of Covid. Perhaps I will schedule an End-Of-The-Pandemic-Card because that will give me at least another year and a half to procrastinate!
As a single mother of teenage twins of the male species I face the annual conundrum of wondering whose house I should try to get invited over to this year, as it’s my ex’s year with the kids. In between frantically dropping text-hints to all my friends, I wonder if it would be nicer to sit on the sofa with a bowl of popcorn and watch a romantic comedy about someone else’s love life, or if I want to be the one single childless-parent awkwardly trying to explain to someone at Thanksgiving dinner where my kids are while I watch other couples wipe cranberry sauce off their chins and other people’s children play, all while feeling a tiny bit sorry for myself. (Being a single parent without kids at someone else’s party always feels a bit like going to the dog park without a dog or hanging out at the playground trying not to look like a pedophile.)
Every year I vow that I will try to plan ahead so I might do something glamorous like go away to a writing retreat in the French Alps or steal off with an unmarried girlfriend to a place where people will rub me with hot oils and salt. Of course these are distant fantasies and now there’s Covid to worry about, so the wisest thing to do really is to just do what I’m already doing Shelter-In-Place in my fuzzy pink bathrobe with my two mutts on the worn-out sofa.
So how are any of us to find gratitude amidst the chaotic storms of our messy lives? Some of us are distanced by choice from our families by divorce or by the pandemic or by choice. Some of us are raising children with rare diseases. Some of us are battling diseases. Some of us are grieving and most of us carries around a broken heart. Is it obnoxious or wrong to even ask that we seek to find gratitude amidst all this suffering?
Oddly, I’m going to say yes. Here’s why. Science and some really wise people have figured out that creating a gratitude practice benefits our brains, which benefits our moods, which ultimately benefits our lives—which might make them a tiny bit less dark at this darkening time of year.
I learned many years ago that writing down what you’re grateful for every day (or at least 3x a week) can actually change your brain, improve your mood, and boost your immunity. So I overcame my internal pessimist and started doing it. I still have had some really crappy days. But what I have found is that this simple practice has also been a lifeline during some really down-in-the-mud moments, because when we are able to refocus our gaze on what went right each day—it lifts up our eyes and helps us crawl out of the mud.
Some days you might just need to weep and throw your hands up. But if you ask yourself (and write it down if you can find a chewed up pen in between the sofa cushions) if there’s anything tiny you can be grateful for you might be surprised. It might be the moment when your daughter stopped to notice a daisy on the sidewalk. It might be the moment that your friend made you laugh about how you fell on your face. It might be the fact that you woke up and realized you don’t have Covid, the ash has stopped falling out of the sky, your house is still standing, or you got three silent minutes to drink your tea. What are you grateful for today?
Join me every Thursday (except holidays) at 11:00 am PST in “Journaling & Resilience Workshop” for Rare Moms & Caregivers Sign up at AngelAidCares.org "workshops" or learn more about TraumaLess Needle Pokes at mightykidscan.com
