gratitude and grief
“The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them. How much sorrow can I hold? That’s how much gratitude I can give. If I carry only grief, I’ll bend toward cynicism and despair. If I have only gratitude, I’ll become saccharine and won’t develop much compassion for other people’s suffering. Grief keeps the heart fluid and soft, which helps make compassion possible.” ~ Francis Ward Keller
In wrapping up my month of speaking to Thanksgiving and gratitude, I would be remiss if I did not speak to, the conflicting emotions the holidays often trigger for me and so many others. Author and speaker, Lisa Whittle refers to such emotional conflicts as, “the hard good.”. In a previous blog, its-complicated, I spoke to the confusion of the reality that our lives often exist in both happy and sad, good, and bad, and grateful and grieving spaces simultaneously.
“Demanding that only one thing can be true at the same time will hinder [me/us] from living a full life.” ~ Lisa Whittle.
Holidays and milestone family events in particular, always pull me into the depths of these complicated, yet completely normal, coexisting feelings. On one hand, I am incredibly humbled and grateful for the blessings God has graciously lavished on me/us.
Greg and I have each other and we are so blessed in that regard. I deeply desired to experience a good, healthy, happy marriage, and God has blessed me with my current one. We have all our children and grandchildren who bless our lives beyond measure, and we have our huge extended families and friends. Our cup runneth over.
We know this. We thank God for this. We acknowledge our gratitude, and we are appreciative to God, to one another, to everyone, and for everything we have.
Yet, there is always this feeling of grief in these significant moments of life. It’s hard to explain sometimes because people immediately think I am not happy with Greg or our family overall, but that is not it at all.
Time has pushed us forward into a future I couldn't imagine back in 2001.
photo credit: Daniele Levis Pelusi @yogidan2012
“If you want to have a full life, you have to accept its nuances. Sometimes life will have you laughing five minutes after you have cried. Sometimes you’ll be mad at your circumstances and still grateful to be alive.” ~ L. Whittle
Feeling gratitude and grief simultaneously is one of those nuances. For example, I am certain when Megan, the daughter of Greg’s former wife Judi who passed away, married, on her wedding day, Greg felt gratitude that I was there and yet tremendous grief because Judi wasn’t there, and she should have been.
Feeling grief over Judi not being there does not diminish the gratitude he has for me in his life. It’s not one without the other. It’s being able to feel gratitude because he has experienced grief.
It’s a lot about being grateful for what you have because you understand what has been lost.
So, when I say holidays and milestone family events always trigger this sense of gratitude and grief for me, it is because of this understanding.
It’s not only about the physical loss of those I have loved, but also the loss of broken relationships, and the loss of what you wanted your life to look like and the loss of what you wanted for your kids.
Greg and I talk about this subject, and it’s important that we are able to have such open and heartfelt discussions in order to have an honest, deep, and intimate relationship. We both went into our first marriages believing it was for life, good and bad, sickness and in health, until death... Life doesn’t always play out like the movie we have in our heads.
Therefore, there is a grief that accompanies that disappointment, the broken family unit, hopes and aspirations not fulfilled, and it rears its head in those memory making moments, those moments of sincere gratitude, and yet, grief. Sometimes we mourn that “original” loss all over.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. — Matthew 5:4
The juxtaposition of those two emotions and feelings used to create so much confusion and shame for me before I understood that they can actually live in the same space, before I learned that gratitude can be one of the most powerful grief healing tools we have in our belt.
It has taken years to really allow myself to enjoy the holidays because of what the holiday experience was for my sons. I grew up in a nuclear family, grandparents stayed together, my parents stayed together so holidays, weddings, and milestone events were not divided between mom’s family and dad’s family.
As kids, we were not drug all over like my sons were because of my divorce, their grandparents divorce on my ex-husbands side, the divorce of his new wife’s parents, which meant multiple houses to hit during holidays…meaning utter chaos for my boys.
I mourn the loss of the family unit any time there is an event where families would normally attend together, as a family unit. I mourn the loss of that nuclear family when all of our kids, and now grandchildren, have to “juggle” schedules just to try to fit in seeing “all the parents” because there have been so many breakdowns of the nuclear family.
photo credit: Liv Bruce @livvie_bruce
Nothing that I am saying diminishes what Greg and I have, or how blessed we are that our kids and grandchildren bring us tremendous joy and a bounty of love. We have tremendous gratitude for all of it, but we also know it is not the way God intended families to live today.
I also experience grief during this time knowing how much of a positive role model and impact my dad would have been in the lives of my sons. He would have considered that an honor and would have stepped into the role as they were growing up and becoming men.
I grieve the loss of him often, but especially every single holiday or milestone moment because he would have been there for them, and they desperately needed a man like him in their lives!. Instead, they never got to meet him. He passed years before they were born.
My heart grieves the loss of my son who chooses not to have a relationship with me, and the holidays and milestone moments shine the light on that daily reality that, most days, I am able to tuck away in the depths of my heart in order to keep living.
To say that the holidays or significant milestone moments are what they were to me when I was young and innocent would be a complete lie, but I can say that God has blessed me with reasons to still feel deep gratitude in the midst of the grief.
“I can choose to accept or resist my grief, but I cannot end it, and I would not want to, because grieving is the other face of love; it is the inevitable consequence of change…of life.” ~ Paul Bennett
None of us desire experiences of grief and loss, but they are, of course, inevitable. Our only choice is how we will carry them, how will we learn from them, how will we handle our experiences when they manifest as grief, and will we allow ourselves to fully experience the dual emotion?
Practicing gratitude while feeling or suffering with grief doesn’t feel instinctual or natural, in fact, practicing gratitude “seems unrealistic.”
When I think about the people in my life who I think of as wise, the people who I would describe as "old souls, they are the people who have been through a lot and have come out the other side wiser and deeper, both emotionally and spiritually. They have been through hard times, including challenge and loss, and have emerged more grateful and wiser about life.
“It’s hard to accept something we wish were different, but when we do, we exchange pain for freedom. Accepting what you did not want or ask for can change us for the better, but it does not mean we affirm what we didn’t ask for.” ~ Lisa Whittle
After we experience loss, we tend to focus on what we no longer have. As a result, we focus our energy on the negative, or what is missing in our life, rather than on the positive, or all of those wonderful things we still have. To want what is no longer in our life is to waste what still remains in our life.
"How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard" ~ Winnie the Pooh.
photo credit: @helloimnik.co.uk
How blessed am I to have had those people I am missing now, in my life at all? How blessed am I to have my kids because of my first marriage, all the beautiful memories of 27 years when my son included me in his life, and the wow! The blessings I have now being married to Greg.
Kingsley Gallup, MA, LPC and author of Project Personal Freedom, explained, “With gratitude, we can embrace our grief and burn it as fuel for our journey.” Regardless of the source of our grief—whether it’s a recent loss or a long-standing injury—Kingsley says that practicing gratitude is an effective way to reinstate joy in our lives.
“Grief is part of the human condition,” she says, noting that grief comes from many types of losses. It can be the “loss of dreams, time, self-esteem, enthusiasm, relationships and loved ones.”
“For anyone who’s grieving, isn’t that what we want? To feel joyful again?” she asks. “Gratitude heals.”
photo credit: Donald Giannatti @wizwow
The following is from the-geography-of-grief blog:
Leaning into grief reminds me I am alive and still human. It keeps the vibrant parts of me soft, alive, and not hardened.
By and large, we are very averse to facing our most difficult emotions head on. We've been conditioned to think that expressing our pain is a sign of weakness and that vulnerability is inherently a bad thing
Poet Kahlil Gibran said, 'The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.' We experience little genuine joy in part because we avoid the depths." What's more, all this avoidance takes massive amounts of psychic and physical energy, which perpetuates the cycle of feeling run down, isolated, and exhausted.
So, what's the alternative? To engage with grief/sadness/disappointment/depression/fear and to allow others to share it with you. To understand that whatever the struggle, it is something that provides us with important information about our lives and enriches us despite how painful the process might be...as Mr. Weller beautifully states: "The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them. How much sorrow can I hold? That’s how much gratitude I can give. If I carry only grief, I’ll bend toward cynicism and despair. If I have only gratitude, I’ll become saccharine and won’t develop much compassion for other people’s suffering. Grief keeps the heart fluid and soft, which helps make compassion possible."
What I have learned in grief, is that Jesus can show up no matter what. He’s not annoyed by our sorrow. In fact, it seems He’s attracted to it because it opens doors for intimacy we may have never otherwise entered. As we invite Him into our grief and gratitude, He teaches us how they can work together to make us authentic representations of His hope in a dying world.
When we are grateful, we are focusing on the present. We are focusing on the here and now. We are leaning into and feeling the pain, knowing that we wouldn’t hurt so much if we didn’t care so much.
“Grief may never end, per se, but it will change shape,” she says. “And we can do much to change its shape. Gratitude is acceptance. It allows us to embrace a chapter of life we hadn’t envisioned. When we can find the blessings, we are better able to let go.” (From author, Kingsley Gallup)
I thought this snip it from Joseph Burgo Ph.D., Psychology Today, wraps all of this up quite well.
The ability to feel profound grief and gratitude, I believe, are the hallmarks of mental health. I reject all those self-books that teach you 100 ways to achieve happiness, or how to "conquer" this or that affliction. Can you grieve for the damage that you'll never completely transcend but at the same time feel grateful for the actual good in your life?
Not for the first and probably not for the last time, I'll bring up It's a Wonderful Life. As always, I'll be watching it during the holiday season and I recommend that you watch it, too. It's a moving study in grief and gratitude. When George stands weeping with his family as the townspeople of Bedford Falls file through his front door, bringing money to save him from prison, those are tears of gratitude in his eyes -- there is much good in his life! -- but it's not a happily-ever-after kind of ending.
For me, at least, it's bittersweet, a mixture of feelings. George never did get to travel the world and have adventures, as he had always longed to do. He'd always grieve for what he'd missed, and always regret what he'd never have the chance to do. He'd also love and feel deeply grateful to his wife, family, and friends. One doesn't erase the other.
That's as good as it ever gets for anyone.
Holidays and major milestones of life will likely always have this bittersweet taste to me. Gratitude for my bounty of magnificent and undeserved blessings, yet grief from consequences of living in a broken and fallen world.
A Belated Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
Readings of Interest:
The dance-of-grief-and-gratitude
Step-by-step:Practice Gratitude When Grieving
“Grief is unexpressed love.” Andrew Garfield
Andrew Garfield (I’m not crying. You WILL cry!)
