A break from forced gratitude
You were born grateful.
Your child was born grateful.
When we are born, we don’t question our worth. We don’t doubt that there is enough care, love and goodness to go around for everyone.
And so we don’t doubt that love is always for us. Always with us. And always within us.
Our bodies just know. Our bodies know how to be grateful and receive good things.
And then our bodies forget.
Eventually, the truth of abundant love and caring that our bodies knew, was replaced by one of lack, of scarcity and not-enoughness. The story of lack usually starts with learning that only through the right behavior, the right temperament, the right way of being–are we worthy of belonging and acceptance.
We learned to work hard, to do things the “right” way to be loved. Because we no longer believed that love is inherently ours. We forgot that blessings are not earned. That they simply are for us, because we exist.
Because the story of scarcity, passed down from one generation to the next, says that we must earn good things. (And so must others.)
Scarcity tells us, on popular holidays like Thanksgiving, that we HAVE to be grateful.
We have to filter our experiences of the year and pick out the "good ones" we call blessings.
We have to find the lessons that our struggles taught us, and then say we are grateful for those painful experiences.
We have to thank a punitive higher power for our blessings, or they will be taken away from us.
Scarcity says that there isn’t enough of anything to go around and that we must hoard, and if necessary–take from others.
Scarcity is what told a group of white settlers that this land was for the taking. That land is something to be taken at all.
And if today the nostalgia and the marketing that tells you to BE thankful and FEEL gratitude, doesn’t sit well with you–scarcity will tell you that there is something wrong with you. Or with your child.
But there is nothing wrong with you.
In fact, there is a truer story that our bodies always knew. Even if our minds forgot it.
It is the story of abundant, infinite love.
But this story of abundant love was distorted by the lens of lack in many of our families. A lack that equates love with unconditional obligations and loyalties to each other. It has been distorted by religious institutions, to say that even our access to the divine is conditioned by our behaviors and thoughts.
But abundance says that simply because we exist, we are loved. Simply because we exist, we are worthy of experiencing that love through our relationships with ourselves, with each other, with nature, with the divine…
It doesn’t matter what you have done, or how lucky or not you have been. Abundance means that all of the parts of our stories can be held with love and compassion. Abundance can hold it all.
In abundance, there is room for…
A day of thankfulness and a day of mourning.
Nostalgic remembering of comforting meals (even if the ones on tv were the only ones that actually felt comforting for some of us).
Heartbreaking truth telling and truth learning about the history behind this holiday.
Grief for the hopes and people and relationships that aren’t here today.
Abundance has room for all of these things.
And more…
Remembering that our most painful, alone, and scary moments are when we are most loved.
Acknowledging our blessings, and knowing that there is so much more where they came from.
Opening our intentions to receive more.
Knowing that our blessings do not diminish simply because we make room for our pain.
Remember to make room for every single part of your story from this past year.
The new relationships, births, expansive moments of healing, achievements…
And also the separations, losses, dark nights of the soul, and setbacks…
Every single part of your story is right because it is yours. It does not define you, but it is yours to honor and to share with others who can hold it with you.
Today, remember that your story is worthy of nothing but holding, caring, and seeing.
You are worthy of nothing but being held in love cared for, and being seen.
Today I will ritualize a remembering of abundance and truth; and say no thanks to the gratitude list and illusion of scarcity. And if you would like to share the story that you are honoring today, I will see and hold it with the infinite love that is there for you and me.
With abundant care for you and your loved ones,