I’d be grateful if I could come up with a good title for this post…

When a person is happy, Thanksgiving probably seems like a really easy and obvious holiday. It’s easy to find things to be thankful for when you’re happy. You don’t really have to try to find something to be grateful for, gratitude is just floating all around waiting to be noticed, acknowledged, and hopefully appreciated.

That is how I felt over Thanksgiving this year; I couldn’t turn around without finding something to be grateful for. I spent Tuesday night through Sunday morning at my dad’s house enjoying the first holiday since he moved to Maryland earlier this year. Although the location was new, the holiday itself was enjoyed much the same as the last several years: quietly, while eating tasty things…an introvert’s paradise. We spent much of the time in the house watching one thing or another on tv. I sewed a lot. Daddy read the paper. The cat came along with me so we were amused by his antics the whole time. We enjoyed a lovely second Thanksgiving with friends on Saturday. There was much to be enjoyed and we did so with gusto. Any time I thought about how at Thanksgiving I should think about what I was grateful for, I immediately was like pssh, that’s easy. I am grateful for all of this, duh. I never took a moment to sit with the gratitude, I just enjoyed knowing that it was there in the background. I was happy and that was good enough for me.

Then came Sunday.

The morning started out great. I woke up with the cat snuggling me. After enjoying that for a while I went downstairs where there was a fresh made pot of coffee waiting. I drank my coffee and played on my phone until just after 10:00 when I headed outside to go into town to get gas and get ready to head home. I packed a few bags in the passenger’s side and then got in the driver’s seat and tried to start the car. It would not start. Tried again. No dice. Checked that the car was in park: it was. Still it would not start. It cranked and cranked but wouldn’t turn over. Obviously, this was a dad-level problem. I walked inside and got my dad to come help me. He came out and as he stood beside the open driver’s side door while I turned the key, finally the engine turned over and the car started. Daddy said it sounded like the thing had flooded; we were somewhat flummoxed as to how it became flooded, but whatever, the car was running. I went into town and was able to turn off and start the car just like normal without any further issue. Figuring that was going to be the biggest issue of the day, I returned to my happy, glow-y, Thanksgiving-y feeling.

Not long after returning from town, the car was packed and Moishe (the cat) and I were back on our way north. The drive down had been sunny and cheerful and filled with the prospect of four full days of relaxation. The cat, though displeased about being confined to his travel carrier, let out only one meow on the whole trip south. He actually seemed to enjoy it when I opened the zipper a little and scratched his forehead. I didn’t need to stop to pee even once. Every song that came up on shuffle was exactly the song I needed at that moment. Traffic flowed freely and all these factors combined to make an almost three hour trip seem much shorter.

On Sunday the drive home was fraught to say the least. Firstly, it was raining. While I don’t mind driving in the rain, there is something about poor weather that makes many drivers leave their brains at home in the pickle jar. So not only is it harder to see, but navigating around those brining their minds requires closer attention and increases tension. The book I was listening to was only okay and not really holding my focus, but I really wanted to finish it on this trip so I was trying to stick it out despite boredom. There was traffic in Delaware and just over the bridge in New Jersey, so I was navigated around the turnpike for awhile. This took me off my normal route, making it necessary to actually pay attention to where I was as well. About ten miles into New Jersey, I had to pee so I stopped. Then maybe twenty miles after that, the cat decided he’d had enough of his tiny prison and started yowling and trying to escape. When I tried to comfort him, he clawed at my finger. The rain just kept coming down harder, people kept driving crazy, and the cat kept meowing and clawing at the sides of his carrier. When we arrived home around 3:00, my stomach was in knots from the tension (and from having to pee again), I had a headache radiating down my neck, and a full car to unload in the pouring rain.

This was all before the errands I had to run. Having been away for several days, there was no food in the house. The cat was out of wet food. I was down to my last day of my medicine. All of which added up to needed trips to the grocery store, the pet store, and the pharmacy. So out I went, back into the rain, to fetch supplies.

At the store I couldn’t get the lettuce I wanted because the guy was restocking at a glacial pace and I was not feeling gracious enough to be sure I’d be polite when asking him to move so I could get what I wanted. Also, they were out of cucumbers.

The pet store didn’t have the dry food I buy in a smaller bag, so I had to buy the big one that doesn’t really fit on top of the fridge which is where I have to keep it because Moishe is a lunatic and will rip open the bag and eat himself to death if it is within reach.

My psychiatrist was on vacation for the holiday, so instead of getting a full refill called in I had to beg for a three day emergency supply of meds. (I’m making this sound more dramatic than it is. I don’t have to beg, it’s a standard practice, but it always makes me feel a little guilty as if they are going to interrogate me as to my intentions for the drugs should they decide to give them to me.)

When I got home, I had to unload the car again in the rain.

Then I had to remake the bed as I had stripped it to wash the sheets.

Then I had to put my laundry away.

And then, imagine this: I was grouchy. All the happy, floaty, Thanksgiving-y feelings were gone, just like that. What was I thankful for? Uh…hold on…that is a tough one…I got nothing.

When I was in IOP (Intensive Outpatient Program) for mental health care there were two other Megans in the program along with me. Anonymity is protected as much as possible at these things, so we went by our last initials: Megan D, Megan T, and I was Megan M. Each day of the program they split us into groups and had us cycle through different sessions, one of which was always a check in session where everyone was asked to share how they were doing that day.

One time I was in the same check in group with Megan D. She went through the rote list of questions that we all had to answer (did you brush your teeth today? did you take your meds as prescribed? how strong is the urge to drink/drug?) before coming to the last item on the list: her affirmation for the day. That day she chose “I am grateful” as her affirmation. When she told this to the group, the counselor leading the conversation asked her to expand on that. Megan explained that she had started keeping a gratitude journal. Every night before going to sleep she would write down three to five things from the day that she was grateful for.

“And how is that going?” the counselor asked.

“It’s actually really hard to think of things sometimes,” Megan D. responded.

The counselor went on to explain that gratitude, like the other strategies we were learning to help manage our mental health, is a practice. It is not a thing that you just have that will automatically make you feel better. Gratitude is a mindset, a way of thinking, and just like any other strategy or coping mechanism, requires practice.

If you think about it coming up with five things to be grateful for every day does seem challenging, even to a happy person. I think this is because at first blush we imagine that the term “gratitude” should only be applied to the big things in life: Am I happily married? Do I live in my dream house? Is my job the best job that I will ever have? Is my family healthy? Do I have a lot of money? When the question, “What are you thankful for” goes around the Thanksgiving table, I think people feel a fair amount of pressure to mention something big in their life that they are grateful for. Something that others may not have. Something they have to express gratitude for because society deems it so, i.e. “you have your health, you should be grateful.”

We are deeply mistaken in this assumption that gratitude has to be big. In our check in session Megan D. shared that often she started with the tiniest thing to get her list going. One day she was grateful that they had her favorite snack mix when she went to get lunch. Another day she was grateful that she got to pet a dog. At that point in her life all of the negatives were built up extremely high and blocked her view of anything positive to be thankful for. By practicing gratitude she was able to make little peepholes in the walls of negativity and start to see some daylight poking through, one little item at a time.

For a while after IOP I did keep a gratitude journal and it really did help me find joy on the worst days. I fell out of the practice as things turned around for me and life got going again after the worst of the pandemic. Happily, as happened over Thanksgiving, I don’t often find myself grasping at straws when looking for something to be grateful for. Most often the things I am thankful for smack me right in the face and I am very aware of them. When you’ve been quite low, the highs are easier to recognize. But then there are days like today when Murphy’s Law comes out to play and the “woe is me” thinking kicks in full force. These are the days when I sit down and force myself to make a list.

So here we go:

1) I am grateful that my car started today

2)I am grateful for GPS that is smart enough to route around the worst of the traffic

3)I am grateful that even though he was a huge pain in the ass on the drive home, at least the cat didn’t shit in his carrier

4)I am grateful for rain boots

5)I am grateful for HBO Max

There are so many other things for which I am grateful. My thankfulness list for my life overall is very long and I am very blessed, no brag. But for today, these are the five things. These are the five ways that I’m poking holes in the downside so that I can see enough good to keep my head up and keep moving.

May your list be long and quick to come to mind. But if it’s hard to think of even one or two things, don’t worry. Keep practicing, it’ll get easier.

Hey, look! Now you can be grateful that this post is over! That’s one…