How To Be Grateful When Things Aren’t Going Your Way

A Thanksgiving Perspective Shift

As Thanksgiving comes our way, many of us are facing issues in our life that we didn’t choose, that we don’t really want, and that we have painful feelings about. It’s not always easy to find silver linings when life isn’t going your way. It’s caused me to pause, to step back, and to wrestle with how we handle Thanksgiving, a time of gratitude, when nothing seems to be working out the way you’d hoped. These are the questions I wrestle with, trying to find gratitude for the life I actually have without gaslighting my scared, resistant, grieving parts that aren’t necessarily getting their way.

Life has thrown me some serious curveballs lately. The one bit of very good news is that, after three years of bicoastal living while trying to build a life with my partner Jeff Rediger, he finally moved full time to California in June, after leaving his job as medical director of McLean Hospital at Harvard. I’m extremely grateful to be together with him full time right now, without all those 7 hour SFO-Boston flights. Having coffee every morning and cuddling in person every night is so much better than all those three hour phone calls and silly Zoom “dates.”

But that’s the only big change I’m really excited about right now. Not only did my pick for President not win, leaving my human rights activist parts reeling and in despair. I’m also dealing with the intense emotional impact of a very recent empty nest, now that my daughter is on a gap year in Portugal and I’m back from 7 weeks in Europe, home in California. I miss her so much my heart hurts every day, even though I’m super excited for her launch.

At the same time, I found out from my generous landlord, who has given me housing security as a renter of the same house for 16 years, that I have to vacate the home I’ve raised my daughter in by April 1, right after my partner Jeff just moved all his stuff from Boston to move in with me here. In addition, Matt, the father of my daughter who has lived next door since our divorce ten years ago to wonderfully co-parent our child is understandably expatriating, like so many others. So after seeing him every day since our divorce, I’m also losing the man who’s been my family, even though he stopped being my husband. I miss him every day too. One of my best friends just moved overseas, as so many are right now. So that’s another heartbreak, even though I’m happy for my friend. Another dear friend just died, and we just attended his celebration of life, way too young. I was glad I had the chance to sob on his chest and say goodbye while he was in Hospice right before I left for Europe. He died a week later.

There are no other homes for rent in the coastal Marin county community I am very attached to, so we’re very likely to have to leave my community, which has been my emotional backbone and my great joy. Because we have to relocate, my housemate of 13 years, April, has decided to move back east to be closer to her family. And then there’s my dog, who I’m struggling to care for now that my daughter and my ex are no longer here to look after her when Jeff and I travel for work. I just don’t know if I can keep Gaia, who I never signed on to take responsibility for (that was a former partner who then promptly abandoned me and the dog and left me to care for the puppy), so that wrecks me.

So I’m bracing myself for the potential of losing the physical proximity of my daughter, my ex next door, my housemate April, my dog, my friend… And I’m losing my home of 16 years, my beloved community, my country as I knew it, and potentially my human rights as an American, should Trump succeed in stripping many Americans of the freedoms we’ve enjoyed and should I stay in the US.

Plus, I’m aging. My hair is graying. I have this pain in my left knee that just won’t seem to go away. I can’t seem to get rid of my Covid baby, gained during the pandemic and, I guess, menopause. I don’t bounce back quite like I did twenty years ago, and I’m definitely no longer in the young maiden phase of having all the best of my life ahead of me.

It’s a bit too much change to process all at once, given that most of these changes have just happened- without me choosing for it to be so.

I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. So how do we find gratitude when so many things are not going our way?

I just taught a life review class Your Impact & Your Legacy this past weekend, and my students were amazing. Their stories touched my heart and the ways they’re making meaning out of their lives, finding gratitude even amidst regret, remorse, and grief, moved me deeply. I shared with them a poem about gratitude that is helping me orient towards radical gratitude in this time of change in my own life and in our world. Let me share it here, as a Thanksgiving blessing.

You Will Lose Everything, by Jeff Foster

You will lose everything. Your money, your power, your fame, your success, perhaps even your memories. Your looks will go. Loved ones will die. Your body will fall apart. Everything that seems permanent is impermanent and will be smashed. Experience will gradually, or not so gradually, strip away everything that it can strip away. Waking up means facing this reality with open eyes and no longer turning away.

But right now, we stand on sacred and holy ground, for that which will be lost has not yet been lost, and realizing this is the key to unspeakable joy. Whoever or whatever is in your life right now has not yet been taken away from you. This may sound trivial, obvious, like nothing, but really it is the key to everything, the why and how and wherefore of existence. Impermanence has already rendered everything and everyone around you so deeply holy and significant and worthy of your heartbreaking gratitude. Loss has already transfigured your life into an altar.

Take that in for a moment…”that which will be lost has not yet been lost, and realizing this is the key to unspeakable joy.”

It’s so easy to take for granted that which we have not yet lost. Every day now, I’m appreciating my house and my community, because I have not quite yet lost it yet. When I focus only on that which I’m losing, I feel swamped with pain. But when I think about all that I have not yet lost, I can find that legitimate, non-bypassing silver lining.

I’ve not yet lost my health.

I’ve not yet lost the lives of my currently alive loved ones.

Although I’m struggling financially, I’ve never gone bankrupt or lost all my money.

Although I have to leave my home, it’s not yet for certain that I’ll have to leave my community.

Although my daughter is no longer in the home, my relationship with her is actually quite beautiful and maturing into a post-empty nest adult-to-adult relationship, especially since we went to therapy together to help her heal her mommy wounds.

I’ve not yet lost my dog, and maybe something will magically appear that will make it possible to keep her.

My friend from overseas is back for Thanksgiving, and I get to break bread together tonight.

I still have Jeff, and we can live in a treehouse if need be.

I recently heard Jon Kabat-Zin define overwhelm as “The feeling that our lives are somehow unfolding faster than the human nervous system and psyche are able to manage well.” But you know, I have to say that this reorientation towards really appreciating that which I have not yet lost is impacting me and helping me deal with the overwhelm.

Right now, I am still in the home I will lose by April, and I love being here right here, right now.

Right now, my dog is sleeping on the sofa beside me and we’ll walk to the beach at low tide in a few hours.

Right now, I’m chatting on the phone with my daughter via WhatsApp and just hearing her voice makes my heart melt.

Right now, April is in the kitchen rustling up some breakfast, and I have tears in my eyes, tears of gratitude.

Right now, I still have some liberties in my country as long as Biden is still President until January.

Right now, the atmospheric river and bomb cyclone have past and the floodwaters are receding and the sun has popped out and is spilling little prism rainbows across my carpet.

Right now, I’m preparing Dishoom’s black dal so I can feed my friend who is back in town for a breath.

Right now, I’m so grateful someone else is hosting Thanksgiving tomorrow, so I can be among chosen family and don’t have to cook or clean or travel.

Right now, I still have some naturally brown hair and only parts of it are gray.

Right now, I don’t have cancer or heart disease or diabetes or anything other than a bum knee.I can still hike ten miles if I’m willing to take a little Aleve, and I’m grateful for this body.

Right now, the wife of my dear friend who died is still here, even if he is not.

I am not trying to bypass or gaslight my parts that are sad, disappointed, scared, and grieving. They are all welcome here. But I am welcoming in the grateful parts that are focusing right now on that which has not yet been lost.

So on this Thanksgiving, I invite you to let yourself feel the sadness of who’s not here right now, who won’t be with us this holiday season, what you’re losing, what’s not going your way, what you didn’t choose that you have to deal with anyway. Let yourself be overwhelmed if that’s what’s real.

But also, let’s consider that which has not yet been lost. Can you practice not taking anything for granted right now? Let yourself notice the small moments, the certainty anchors, the tiny pleasures, the heart-opening, unspeakable joy of what’s still in your life that you could one day lose?

Those who have had near death experiences say that’s the best part, that everything feels so much more precious. Impermanence, if we can handle touching it emotionally, feeling that fragility without causing us to numb it out, really can turn our life into an altar.

May you and your loved ones experience at least moments of unspeakable joy this holiday season.

*If you want space to process your losses, your gratitudes, or whatever comes up during the holidays, join me and Frank Anderson for WRITE TO HEAL, a 6 week online Zoom IFS & memoir writing class that starts in January. Save $100 if you register now.