Gratitude Practice

Noticing what's still good even alongside the mess

Thanks for being here, everyone. I appreciate your presence, and the time you take out of your day to read these words when an email comes through. I wrote the original of this post nearly seven years ago now, and I sent it around as a substack newsletter in 2022, so if you’ve been here since then, this may sound familiar. I tend to adapt it to what’s going on in the world every year around this time. At any rate, even though I wrote it, I too need the annual reminder to allow space for both grief and gratitude.

May you see grace

wherever your eyes land.

May you need not look far

to feel the humbling knee-buckling delight

in being alive.

~Chris Heeter

It’s Thanksgiving time¹ — a complicated holiday if we look through the lens of colonization — in the United States, and what a season of collisions we’re in. Some parts of the world burn while floods swallow others. Planned power outages become business as usual to prevent wildfire while incredible amounts of energy are used to keep indoor ski resorts going in deserts. Large numbers of people in too many countries seem to have missed (or actively ignore or discount) the history lessons about the horrors that come from unchecked, systematic racism and the dangers that arise when fear and entitlement are at the root of action. War continues, genocide is funded by tax dollars, political theater and elections of world leaders create chaos and further illuminates the dire need for change. Glaciers melt, species disappear, generations of families squeeze into one apartment while vacation homes owned by celebrities stand empty. Constant growth remains the goal while finite resources vanish. Work hours are long, jobs are lost, people are sick, loved ones are hurting, the dog is getting old. There are many things to lament and grieve.

Grief and lament have their place in the world, and they are necessary. Yet so is giving thanks. Gratitude is nearly always possible.²

Elie Wiesel wrote, “When a person doesn’t have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude.”

It can be tempting, in the face of loss, to look for silver linings or to say, “just focus on what you still have.” But as Megan Devine says, “Gratitude is not the Tylenol of life.” Practicing gratitude doesn’t change what’s wrong. Gratitude doesn’t mean burying unwanted feelings or looking for the silver lining in a bad situation—gratitude means acknowledging what is still good alongside the mess. You can experience grief, or anger, or overwhelm even while you are grateful for the good things that remain.³

I propose we let some gratitude in to sit next to all the other things that need our attention. Sometimes it takes a little digging to get under the surface. But when we can go there, that’s when we can tap into our full humanity. I don’t know about you, but I’d like gratitude to be included in my attitude description. Not gratitude on demand—gratitude as foundation.

When asked to give thanks at the holiday table, you might say you are thankful for good health, family, friends, and food, if you are fortunate enough to have those things. Maybe you are thankful for a good job, a nice car, a successful quarter, a negative test result.

But what goes unnoticed, even for those who are veterans at practicing gratitude?

Maybe it’s the feel of a warm oak-plank floor as the wood stove gets going late in the evening. Maybe it’s the contrast that a chaotic barn provides to the unusually tidy house when you go out to feed the chickens. Maybe it’s the gasp of frigid air into your lungs that pierces your attention and reminds you how extraordinary it is to experience life on a living Earth that is constantly in flux and always changing. Maybe it’s the vivid red of a cardinal against a backdrop of pure white, framed by the boughs of an old evergreen. Maybe it’s the way the late afternoon light filters through the ice crystals that cling to the hay that got left in the fields. Maybe it’s a heart that beats, even if it feels like it’s breaking. Maybe it’s a mind that seeks clarity even when the fog is thick. Maybe it’s a spirit that craves the presence of something bigger than yourself. Maybe it’s a force that you can’t see that reminds you that you aren’t alone, no matter how many others say grace with you at your table.⁴

May these final weeks of the year, whether it felt like a year of joy, pain, hardship, triumph or defeat, be for you a season of gratitude, whatever country you are in and whatever beliefs and cultures inform your actions.

Feel what you need to feel. You don’t have to be grateful for the hardships that have befallen you.

{i.e. I don’t feel particularly grateful for being laid off early in 2024 and the struggle that followed, which included applying for 90 (90!) jobs. I do, however, feel grateful for the home that kept me sheltered during that time, my family’s support, and the earth that continued turning. And I do, of course, feel grateful for finally being offered a new one.⁵ }

Keep in mind, too, that hard feelings don’t have to cancel out the feelings you’d rather experience.

{i.e. There is a part of me that’s grieving my old routine, how I’d wander the land before starting work for the day at the kitchen table in the sunlight, the flexibility I had to go out to the garden midday or bake a loaf of bread during a meeting. Now I drive to the office and spend a fair bit of the day in a room with no windows. That’s hard transition, and I don’t like the no natural light situation. However, my drive is a beautiful two mile meander by fields and into a pine forest, I am surrounded by people do work they really care about, and there are beautiful trails to explore on my breaks at my new location.}

Things like gratitude and joy don’t cancel out the hard feelings you need to see through to their end. See them through. Ask for help if you need it. Help somebody else.

{I can grieve what’s been lost while I appreciate the opportunity to find beauty in something new.}

Poem found in Church of Shadow and Light, forthcoming in 2025.

May this season invite you to honor the beauty that is possible when you dare to look for it. May you always notice the good that punctuates the days, even if you have to look under the grime, even if the bright spot shows up next to uncertainty. May you always remember that gratitude and grief can sit side by side. And may those little bits of gratitude give you a foundation from which to be in the world, a foundation that takes you one step closer to the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.

1. A word on the traditional Thanksgiving holiday and an invitation to consider Truthsgiving, from Sicangu Oyate CDC.

Kaitlin Curtice

also has some really helpful things to say about how to approach this holiday with grace and kinship.

2. A big claim, and one that I can’t know if I’d make if I’d been born into a harder life situation. Even with ten months of unemployment under my belt. This reminds me that I see, and write, through a certain lens (of privilege).

3. Parts of this section are in a chapter called Activating Hope through Grief and Gratitude in Collisions of Earth and Sky.

4. This paragraph was adapted from a poem that is found in Cold Spring Hallelujah, available anywhere books are sold.

5. I finally found one. Close to home, but leaving the house every day. After 15 years of working 100% from home, it’s a major change. We’ll see how it goes.